


Emigrate

by Darby_Harper



Series: Brave New World-The Changeling Universe [1]
Category: Rammstein
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/M, M/M, Polyamory, Psychic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 11:47:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10786140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darby_Harper/pseuds/Darby_Harper
Summary: Lilly has arrived in Germany to start a new life at last. There will be new adventures to experience, new places to see and a new partner in her life (and Richard's). A new world awaits the Changelings as well, a world of meeting new friends, new enemies and learning just how deep their bonds to one another go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Any similarity between the fictional version of the person portrayed here and the actual person is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction. This is not an attempt to defame the character of said person on the basis of libel, as the work is FICTIONAL (and NOT an intently false statement created with the express purpose of misleading others about the actual character of said person). All rights reserved.**

The skies above Berlin-Tegel airport were shading from the brilliant blue late afternoon to the deep blue-black of a winter evening. It was bitterly cold, unusually cold for Germany at this time of year, and the first big snowstorm of the year was due to drop several inches of snow later that night. People were hurrying through the airport buildings, the air ringing with myriad accents, scents and for those of us with the ability, millions of unshielded minds yammering into ours. Without our Teflon-strong mental shields firmly in place, we'd all be writhing on the floor, screaming our heads off in pain.

 I wobbled down the jet way, my knees semi-solid after hours of being on an airplane. I'd managed several hours of sleep on the last leg of the flight, but I wasn't used to going through four time zones and three airports within 24 hours. Thankfully, the crowd of people deplaning along with me was moving slowly enough that I could get my “land legs” back without falling on my face or into the people in front of me.

  **:: _You doing all right sweetheart?::_** a warm, loving voice murmured into my mind. I smiled to myself and said _**::I'm all right. Hungry as a bear just out of hibernation, though. Better that I'm hungry than throwing up my toenails::**_

 Peering over my shoulder at my lover, Richard Kruspe, I saw his dark indigo and grey eyes twinkling from under his jet-black fringe and when our eyes met, we grinned at each other like fools. He slipped an arm around my waist when he got close enough to do so, nuzzling the back of my neck quickly and slyly. I giggled and gave his hand a quick squeeze, the warmth of his fingers wicking through my gloves. _**::Stop it, that tickles::**_

 _: **:Break it up you two or get a room!::**_ Paul Lander's cheerful mind-voice echoed through our heads. _**::There's children present here!::**_

  _ **::Then don't look, pervert!::**_ I teased back. Paul’s verbal snort was barely audible over the din but I heard it clearly. I would have said more but the crowd in front of me began to thin out and I had to pay attention as to where I was going. I found an unoccupied corner and dragged my carryon luggage to it, placing my back to the wall so I could stretch my arms up high, then touch my toes a few times to get the last of the kinks out of my back. When I looked up again, Paul and Richard were standing in front of me, looking at me with identical expressions of amusement. Behind them were Ollie Riedel, Christoph Schneider and Till Lindemann, quietly dealing with the few fans that had spotted them, and Flake Lorentz was sneaking through the crowd, using everything he had to stay unnoticed until he was standing next to me. 

“I don't know how you do that without any of your talents,” I said, enviously. “I though Till being able to do that was impressive; he must have learned it from you or Ollie.”

 Flake snorted and shoved his thick, blonde hair out of his eyes. We'd all been surprised when he'd bleached his hair platinum blonde at the beginning of the US leg of the tour but it suited him quite well. “What can I say? It's a gift. So, are you ready to stand in yet another line or two and answer questions about everything save what size underwear you have on?”

 _**::Size ten, black silk, bikini cut::** _ I deadpanned. Flake’s pale skin flushed red and he wrinkled his nose at me. _: **:That’s more info than I ever need to know about you. You’ll be fine. We’ll be within screaming distance if you need us::**_

 As the tiny crowd of fans departed, I slid my gloves off and shoved them into my dark blue jacket, then tucked it into the front pocket of my smaller carry-on. Richard commandeered the larger of the two, while Ollie swiftly wrangled the smaller one out of my grasp before I could stop him. Knowing that saying anything to either of them was useless, I shouldered my backpack and followed them to the Customs and Immigration part of the airport. There were no paparazzi to deal with as we had to in New York City, so I was able to follow close to “my boys” and not worry about a fan seeing me and putting two and two together. There were a couple of fans back in the US who'd figured out Richard and I were a couple and weren't exactly happy or nice about it, but thankfully they'd never given me any trouble—or any that I was aware of.

The line that I needed to be in was short and I barely had time to rummage through my backpack to pull out all the documentation I was required to produce. The boys had gotten through Customs quickly; we'd already decided that Richard and Schneider would wait for me and everyone else would head home. We'd said our goodbyes on board the plane as it taxied to our gate, plans, jokes and comments flying quicker than a blink along our bond. I'd insisted on it; I could tell even without our bonds firmly settled in our minds that the band was far too close to the end of their endurance for my liking. Schneider had volunteered to wait for me with Richard, saying that since his house wasn't far from Richard's apartment, he'd share a ride with us but in the end had given in to Richard's insistence that he stay overnight with us and head to his home in the morning.

The three of us had only briefly discussed the fact that not only did Richard still have feelings for Schneider, it went the other way as well. Richard loved me with all the fury and desire as always, but that nagging little bond that had been formed between the two of them  years ago had never dissolved. Any other woman might have been enraged but I wasn't. I'd never had a problem with people who had multiple romantic attachments, and had found that the idea of having not one but two very wonderful men attracted to me to be one that made me feel more than happy. I felt secure, protected and loved doubly. Schneider had been quite upset when he'd admitted that he had serious feelings towards me and Richard but I'd welcomed the idea with an enthusiasm that had surprised both of them. Save for the kisses Richard and Schneider had exchanged in the elevator the night he finally broke down and told us and one or two the night of the farewell party, nothing physical had happened. I'd happily kept to myself the highly erotic dream I'd had the morning after the party about the three of us, and the mere thought of it made me shiver. At least the men were willing to take things as slow as possible. I'd thought I'd need to pound some sense into them but for once, they listened to me and decided that yes, I was right.

Mark that one down, folks.

Once all my documentation was stamped, signed and sealed, I half-ran over to where my darlings waited and threw my arms around Richard's neck, making him stumble backwards with a laugh. Schneider caught him before he could topple over and had to brace himself against the hug I gave him, saying, “Not glad to be here or anything, huh?”

I kissed his stubbly cheek quickly before anyone could spot us, whispering, “You've no idea sweet cheeks.” He laughed softly in my ear and hugged me back, pressing a brief kiss to the side of my neck before letting me go. Richard poked me in the ribs and said, “Come on slowpokes. Let's corral our luggage and head home. I'm going to fall asleep standing up and Lilly's stomach is growling loud enough to make people think there's a bear loose from the circus. I don't know what explanation we'll have to come up for you, Schneider.”

“Keep it up, Reesh, keep it up,” Schneider grumbled even though he smiled as he spoke. “I know where you live and I know your deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secrets that Lilly doesn't know.”

“I think she knows them all by now,” Richard snort-laughed as we meandered down to pick up our luggage. “At least all the ones I'll admit to having.”

 _ **::Lilly, did you know that once upon a time, Richard believed that a potato with sprouts growing out of it wasn't a potato but an evil monster?::**_ Schneider murmured to me. I was leaning over to pick up the largest of my two suitcases and almost threw my back out trying not to laugh at the vision he shared with me of Richard running for all he was worth to get away from a potato with glowing, green tendrils issuing from its skin and a mouth full of very sharp teeth chasing him across the stage, growling and snapping at his behind. Richard turned to face Schneider and hissed, “I was stoned off my head when that happened, Christoph- _I'd-Better-Shut-My-Yap-Right-Now-Schneider!_ ”

 “It's still funny,” I snickered as I pulled the last of my luggage aside so another harried traveler to get to their things. Richard's face was as red as his pinky nails and he was glaring daggers at Schneider, who was all wide puppy-dog eyes and innocence. “Christmas is coming, smart-ass,” Richard grumbled, shouldering him aside to grab his bags. Schneider just nudged him back, collected his bags and followed us out to the taxi stand, still snickering occasionally. By the time we were settled in a warm taxi cab and heading to Richard's, his face was back to its lightly tanned, blush free state but every once in awhile, I'd feel a tiny “snap!” of psychic electricity arc between them, and knew they were mock-fighting. I could do the same thing, only my talent was a fierce fireball that was the psychic equivalent of a nuclear blast. I'd been learning how to temper it over the past several weeks but I was still wary of letting any hint of that particular talent loose.

 Between numerous books that were labeled either science fiction, fantasy or “new age phenomena” and similar websites, I'd been painstakingly putting together a guide to the talents the lot of us shared. Paul had accidentally “infected” his wife, Arielle, before we knew how to keep a bond like ours from forming. She'd been furious with him for several days but once her anger cooled, she'd thrown herself into learning everything she could about her talents. She was a very strong telelpath, for one, and like Paul was able to “lend” those of us within the bond physical and psychic energy. She was a decent empath, though not as strong as Till was, and she seemed to have an affinity with water.

 I'd watched her “pull” a puddle of water across a wet parking lot one evening; she'd fixed her attention on it and with a gentle wiggle of the fingers on her left hand, coaxed the puddle to flow uphill and up into a tiny fountain that rippled against the palm of her hand. A wary, trembling smile had crossed her face as she'd looked at me, saying, “Flashy, eh? I was daydreaming the other afternoon and all of a sudden, I had this...urge...to see if I couldn't make the water in my glass bubble up like a fountain. So I did. I haven't tried to do anything else. Is this...normal, Lilly?”

 “I'm going to say it is,” I replied, reaching over to take Ari's shaking hands and hold them in my own. “Flake's developed a talent for touch-reading objects, and I won't swear to it but I think Till's got something similar to your thing with water, only with fire. He's not quite sure of it himself but I've noticed that all of the fire effects seem to...well, listen to him. Ollie thinks he might have some kind of water affinity too, he's better able to tell than I am these days. Now that we know what to look for, thanks to you, I'm sure Till will get all curious and go monkeying with the pond behind his house.”

 Since that afternoon, Ari had been sending me piles of information she was collecting on all the talents we had and might be developing. Between her work and Flake's never-ending searches, I was amassing a pretty substantial database of information. Sometimes I wished I could find a person who knew more about what was happening to us but it wouldn't do to gripe, so I did what I could with what I had.

 By the time we reached Richard's apartment on the outskirts of Berlin, my head was nodding no matter how hard I tried to stay awake, while Richard and Schneider were deeply asleep, leaning against each other like floppy rag dolls. The taxi driver looked up in the rear view mirror and said softly, “Do you need any help? They look like nothing short of a air horn going off is going to wake them up.”

 “No thanks, we'll be fine,” I said, turning half in my seat to grab Richard's leg and wiggle it at the same time I gave his sleeping mind a 'poke'. He snorted, yawned hugely and woke, nudging at Schneider and saying, “Wakey wakey Chrissy, we're home.”

  _ **::Don't wanna wake up. I'm comfy and warm and sleepy and...::**_

  _ **::C'mon Chris, wake up long enough to drag your shit up to the apartment and you can go back to sleep. Please?::**_ I said, 'pinging' him harder than I did Richard. That did the trick; Schneider opened his pretty greeny-blue eyes and mumbled something that I didn't catch but the meaning was clear. The driver was choking off a laugh at my men being silly and sleepy, but said nothing as we clambered out of the van. He helped us pile our luggage at the front door then waited until the three of us were safely within the apartment's huge foyer before he left. A blast of heat enveloped me like a blanket and I winced at the bright lights coming from the huge light fixture above our heads.

 I turned on one heel to look around the place while Richard gathered up what mail was in his mailbox and found myself quite impressed. The apartment Richard lived in was middle aged by the neighborhood standards, but had been kept up quite well over the years. Art Deco combined smoothly with dark wood, cool marble and clean shades of green and blue, the Christmas decorations glowing softly against the walls. A huge Christmas tree was in the farthest corner of the main hallway, its lights twinkling against the dark green fir tree and setting the gold and silver ornaments to sparkling.

 Schneider had come up behind me as I gawked at my new home and said, “I love this place. I'm on a waiting list for an apartment but so far, no one's moved out or given up their spot. My place is okay but it's your standard bachelor pad.”

 “Don't let him kid you, lovey, he's got a gorgeous house,” Richard said as he sorted through his mail, throwing the junk mail into a nearby recycling bin. “Why you want to move this close to downtown I have no idea.”

 “Because I like it here,” Schneider replied, seating himself on the marble staircase near the Christmas tree. “Not like you don't spend as much time at my house as you do here. Or out at Till's house.”

Richard waved a hand in Schneider's direction but said nothing, shoving the last of his mail into one of the front pockets of his biggest suitcase and towing it over to us. The elevator was a few steps away and it was a good thing that we were the only people awake at such a late time, we practically filled the car up with our bags.

 “You sure this thing will make it up six stories?” I said nervously, hearing the elevator creak and moan as it rose up the shaft. Richard, who was leaning on one of the walls, eyes closed, smiled at me and said, “I've seen a baby grand piano go up this thing without a whimper. We'll be fine.”

“If you say so.”

 The elevator delivered us to Richard's floor safely but wasn't happy that it took us close to a minute to drag all our luggage out and its warning bell chimed softly. “Shit, hurry up and let it go or the next thing it'll do is start buzzing,” Schneider said, half-throwing the duffle bag that he kept a set of drumsticks and other drummer's odds and ends in at me. I caught it and strapped it to one of his suitcases, then followed Richard halfway down the heavily carpeted hallway to his door. A simple number “8,” made of brass and shining mellowly in the warm lamplight coming from sconces placed every so often down the hallway, was attached to a door made of the same wood as the rest of the building, but when Richard tapped it, I could hear that it wasn't a wooden door, but one with a thin sheet of wood over a steel door. Giving him a look, I said, “Expecting the Spanish Inquisition?”

 “Soundproofing and security, my dear. One of the reasons I like this place. Wait till you see the view,” he replied, grinning over his shoulder at me. I heard the clicking of three locks coming open and with a grand gesture, Richard said, “Welcome home, my love. Oh yeah, you can come in too, Christoph."

 “I'm gonna kick you in the ass the next chance I get,” Schneider grumped, reaching over me to thwack Richard in the head, medium-hard. He only laughed and stood aside to allow me to step in and see what he called home. I made it as far as the living room before I stopped, wide eyed at the view through the windows that made up three of the four walls of the room. Heavy curtains made of some black material had been drawn back to show off the view, the strip lighting above the windows turned low as not to cause reflections.

 “Oh my...Reesh, this is beautiful,” I said softly, unable to take my eyes off the view.

 “I thought I showed you pictures of this place,” he said, sliding an arm around me and holding me close. Schneider came up behind us and joined the snuggle, somehow managing to embrace both of us without crowding. “Told you it was pretty,” he said.

 “Pictures don't do this kind of view justice,” I said. “How could you leave this place and go out on the road? I'd never leave!”

 “It makes going out on the road worth it. And even more so now that you're here,” Richard murmured, kissing the back of my neck. He leaned over to nip at Schneider's knuckles, making him laugh. “I think Khira Li was here yesterday and stocked the fridge up a bit. Let's go see what we've got before bedtime. I'm getting hungry thanks to Lilly's stomach yelling the whole way here.”

 “Sounds like a plan to me,” I said, not wanting to leave the warm, comfortable three way embrace I was enjoying. My stomach wasn't having any of it and let me know with a growl that sounded like a bear had taken up residence. The three of us laughed and headed for the kitchen to settle in for a snack.


	2. Chapter 2

I woke up early the next morning, absolutely confused as to where I was. Panic set in before I was able to get my bearings and only the familiar sound of Richard’s soft snoring kicked my memory into gear. Shaking and sweating with fright, I looked around the room, realizing at last that I was in Richard’s apartment, in his bed, and he was curled around me, one arm thrown over my waist and his nose buried in my hair. We weren’t alone, however, for Schneider was snugged up close behind Richard, one hand wound into the front of his t-shirt in a death grip. Both men were soundly asleep and I hadn’t the heart to wake either of them up. 

Wriggling out from under Richard’s arm, I padded into the bathroom to have a pee and get a drink of water before crawling back to bed. I was seriously jet-lagged and sore from not moving as much as I was used to despite my body being able to heal itself a lot faster than the average human. I wasn’t achy enough to need any pain medicine, so I wandered back to bed. I stopped to admire how adorable Richard and Schneider looked curled up like kittens in a basket before I regained my spot in the bed. I tried to stay awake but lost the fight quickly and tumbled back into the dreams I’d left behind when I woke up. 

The second time I woke up, the clock on my mobile phone said it was past noon, closer to one o’clock. I stretched, carefully, and slowly, noticing that I was alone in the bed. I could hear Richard and Schneider’s voices coming through the partially closed door to the bedroom, so I slid out of the bed, pulled my hair back with a hair scrunchie and pulled the old, long-sleeved flannel shirt I used as a robe over the shorts and t-shirt I wore to sleep in, adding a pair of socks to keep my feet warm. I made my way up the hallway and into the main room, which was warm and brightly lit from the dazzling sunshine coming through the windows. The view wasn’t quite as impressive as it had been at night but it was still one hell of a view. I wandered over to the couch that Richard was lazing in and curled up at his side, still admiring what I could see. He kissed me on the cheek and murmured, “Sleep well?”

 “Yeah, I did. Still not quite awake yet,” I replied sleepily. “Does jet lag do you guys in this badly or is it just me?”

 Schneider, who was occupying the other couch, yawned and said, “You get used to it somewhat but it still bothers me if I haven’t been traveling for a while and have to get used to it all over again. It’ll take me about a week to get back to normal. Used to take three days or so but I was a lot younger then.”

 “I believe it. Have I missed anything?”

 “No, we’ve only been up about an hour and decided to let you sleep,” Schneider said, wiggling down into the blanket he was snuggled up in. With his curly hair all over and sleepy green-blue eyes, he was absolutely adorable. I caught the tail end of the same thought coming from Richard and stifled a grin. Although he was as rumpled and drowsy as Schneider, Richard still looked regal and sleek, not unlike a pampered house cat. It never failed to crack me up how catlike my lover was even if he denied it till he was blue in the face. He must have sensed my amusement for he peered at me from under half-closed eyelashes and purred very softly.

 “You were an Egyptian Queen’s prized cat once upon a time,” Schneider said. “I swear, the longer we know each other the more I’m convinced you were.”

 “I’ll never tell,” Richard replied, slowly prying himself off the couch. “I’m going to go make a pot of very strong coffee or I’m not going to be able to do anything but breathe today. Christoph, you want it black or your usual?”

 “The usual. Ugh, how the hell you can stand it that strong I’ve no idea. If I drank my coffee that way I’d be wired for days. No, weeks. You want a hand?” Schneider replied, even though he looked reluctant to move an inch.

 “Nah, I’m good. Lilly, what can I get for you? I have…well, uh, I have tea that’s probably been here a year or so. “

 “I’m not going to quibble, tea is tea right now,” I said. “I’m not the tea snob I used to be, not after working twelve to fourteen hour shifts and not being able to make a pot of tea that no one else would snitch and drink before I had the chance.  Two sugars and let it steep about four minutes, please.”

 “Gotcha,” Richard said as he meandered into the kitchen. The main part of the house was mostly a great room, with the kitchen sort of set off from the rest of the room by a set of Dutch doors.  I hadn’t had the chance to do any exploring yet and even though I was Richard’s lover, I wasn’t going to go poking about on my own. The manners I’d been taught as a kid were old fashioned and some very archaic, and one of them was even if you were someone’s good friend or even a relative, you didn’t go anywhere in their house without them giving you express permission first.

 As Richard crashed around the kitchen making domestic noises, I went over to where I’d stashed my suitcases the night before and pulled the smallest of the bunch over to the couch. Schneider watched me with lazy interest, saying, “That can’t be all the stuff you brought over.”

 “Nope, that’s in a shipping crate in a storage facility somewhere in town,” I said, pulling the pile of file folders that had mysteriously appeared outside the hotel room I was sharing with Richard the night before we left for home. “These are the paper files from my research at Vis-Tek that disappeared the day before I was let go. I got the hard drives back too but they’re in my big carry-on bag. I wanted to stick these and those drives somewhere out of the way until I get some time to look everything over completely.”

 Schneider sat up slowly, shedding the blanket he was wrapped in, eyes wide and bright with interest. “When did this happen? Who sent them back?”

 “I don’t know. The night before we left the States, someone knocked on our hotel room and left a box with the files and drives with a note saying that these were mine and that they apologized for them being taken from me. I had Flake see if he could sense anything off of the paper and the box but all he could get was the sense of a locked steel door. No fingerprints either and I checked. Whoever handled the box, the drives and the paper wore gloves, and packed everything up in a clean room. Not one molecule of any kind of identifiable smell on anything,” I explained, handing one of the folders to Schneider. I didn’t expect him to be able to make heads or tails of the technical drawings, equations or writings in the folder but he flipped through the pages, occasionally stopping to peer more closely at one thing or another.  He was running a finger over one of the brightly colored line graphs, brow furrowed in thought, then said in a distracted voice, “I’m as far as scientifically minded as you’re going to get, but this graph doesn’t look right. There’s one on the page before it, supposed to be the same data but something’s not right.”

 “Let me see,” I said, joining him on his couch and leaning over his shoulder. Pulling out the page he’d been puzzling over, and then pointing at the graph he’d been reading, Schneider said, “This is all supposed to be from the same experiment, right? And you ran the experiment three times? If it’s all the same information and the experiment’s run exactly the same way, under the same conditions, why are the results so different? Shouldn’t they all be the same?”

 I scanned the data from the experiment, hardly remembering what it was for. Taking the two pieces of paper and laying them side by side on the coffee table, I studied the maze of lines and equations, slowly piecing together the information.  “Hand me the rest of the folder, sweetie,” I murmured, accepting the thick pile of papers stuffed into the cardboard file folder from Schneider.  I paged through the file, gnawing on my lip and occasionally murmuring to myself, slowly bringing my thoughts together.

 Then it hit me. I dropped the file folder on the table with a “snap,” startling Schneider half into flight and bringing Richard out of the kitchen at a fast trot. “What…what was that?” he asked, seeing Schneider perched on the arm of the couch and me sitting with my head in my hands. “What’s wrong?”

 “Schneider, I wish I’d had you around back when I ran this mess of an experiment, you’d have caught that mistake,” I sighed, putting the paperwork that I’d scattered across the table back into the folder neatly. “What it comes down to is this; these results tell me that one of the runs I did on the very first batch of the modified AIDS virus was tampered with. The test run that Schneider said was wrong? It wasn’t. The _first_ test results were wrong. I remember now; I had to let the experiment run overnight because it would take up so much computer time and memory if I ran it during the day. So I set it up, let it do its thing, then ran the second and third runs over the next two nights. It was protocol to run two more tests if the trial test run came out skewed. I thought I’d checked all of the results but I guess I didn’t.”

 “Wait a moment,” Richard said, coming around the couch and sitting across the coffee table from Schneider and me, pulling the file folder towards him and paging through it quickly. As he came to the middle of the file where the erroneous results were, he stopped and pointed at the page with the incorrect data and said, “This paper is a different shade of white than the rest of the pages. So’s the ink.”

 “How in the world can you tell?” I said, knowing no one save me had looked through any of the files since they’d mysteriously re-appeared.

 “Enhanced vision, remember? I can see that the ink shades are different from everything else that's in here. And not because this was printed days apart, but pretty recently. The inks are brighter on the one you said were the wrong results, and the paper is a darker shade of white. I’d bet my entire guitar collection that page was printed no more than four weeks ago and the other one is the original. Someone re-ran your experiment and stuck that page in here, probably figured you’d never look at it again,” Richard explained, pointing out what he saw. Flabbergasted, I stared at the pages again, looking up at both him and Schneider, absolutely lost for words. Schneider nodded and said, “I see it now too. That’s sneaky.”

 “So what does this mean?” Richard asked, putting the paperwork back in the folder and closing it. I leaned back into the couch cushions, stared at the ceiling for a moment then replied, “Remember when I said I wasn’t sure how infectious the finished virus that Neal gave me was? This…these results mean I was right all along, that by itself the virus wouldn’t infect someone else, but if you had a virus that was modified in your system, it would combine with the original virus and create something totally new. If I’d never suggested that we have the rest of the band have a little bit of blood from both of us, only you and I would ever be infected.”

 “But Neal was going to infect everyone in his basement that night with something nasty,” Schneider said, fingers unconsciously tapping out a rhythm on his knees. “Remember? He said that he’d come up with a virus that had a kind of bug that would turn your brain to soup?  And we decided it would be better to take a chance with getting what you and Reesh had than die from what he’d had cooked up? Lilly, this _isn’t_ a bad thing. This just confirms what you’d thought. I know it upset you quite a bit that you’d never know if your test results and theories were right. Now you know.”

 “You can’t honestly tell me you’re not a bit angry at me for being stupid and forgetting to re-check my work?” I said.

 “Why?” Schneider replied. “Lilly, someone knew your theory was right and they either tampered with the experiments, or someone came back later, re-ran them and got the correct results. You didn’t do this. And I’ll tell you once again, I don’t regret what I did. I’d do it over again even if the consequences would have been something horrible. Yeah, being a psychic, a telepath, stuff that's supposed to be bullshit  kind of throws you but you get used to it.”

 “And the best part?” Richard broke in. “I don’t feel alone any more. I don’t have this sense of being all by myself even in a stadium full of people. Till always said that I had more darkness inside of me than he could ever dream of, and now there’s a lot less of it. I don’t wake up depressed as often as I used to. I don’t have to be afraid to go to sleep that I’ll have nightmares that will keep me up the rest of the night.”

 Schneider nodded and held out a hand for Richard to take. Pulling him up onto the couch between us, he slid an arm over his shoulders while I draped an arm over Richard’s waist and laid my fingers on Schneider’s stomach.  “What’s that line from “Lilo and Stitch”’? Nobody gets left behind?”

  _“Ohana,”_ I said softly. “ _Ohana_ means ‘family.’ Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten. That’s the line from the movie. “It means more than just people you’re related to. It means those people who mean the most to you, blood relative or not. We’re a family. Except maybe for Ollie, none of us really had what you’d call a family growing up. Now we do.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

The storm that had chased us across the Atlantic Ocean had come and gone overnight, leaving four inches of fluffy snow on every surface. I was staring out the bedroom window, charmed by the Christmas decorations I could see and lost in drinking in every inch of my new homeland. Schneider had left a couple hours earlier, despite Richard's insistence that he didn't need to leave so soon.

 “I have to drop my dirty laundry _somewhere_ , Reesh!” he'd laughed, shrugging into his jacket and winding a scarf around his neck. “Besides, you and Lilly need to get settled in. Lilly, if Richard gets on your nerves, give me a yell and I'll rescue you.”

 I laughed and dropped a kiss on his nose. “I will, sweetheart. Be careful, okay? I know you're taking a cab and all but...I worry.”

 Schneider’s kiss on my lips was sweet and chocolate-flavored; Richard had discovered a stash of chocolate chip cookies in the back of his fridge and we'd set upon them like locusts. Stopping before we'd eaten the whole two dozen had been difficult but we'd managed. “I'll be okay, Lilly. I'll see you guys in a few days, all right?”

 Richard went downstairs with Schneider to wait for his cab, so I towed my luggage into the spare bedroom and unloaded all my dirty clothes into one huge pile to sort out later. The two hard drives that had mysteriously appeared not a week earlier were safely hidden in a shoe box that was in the very back of one of Richard's bedroom closets along with the ten thick, heavy file folders that had been with them. I had no intention of touching any of them for a long, long while, so they were safe where they were for the time being. I finished sorting out the two large suitcases and the smaller one that I'd kept makeup, an extra change of clothes and other things in and wandered back into the bedroom where I flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, excitement mixing with exhaustion. While I wanted to jump up and run down the street to see everything I could, I knew within a half hour I'd be begging to go back to bed. Sitting up, I pushed the curtains aside and looked out over Berlin, still not quite convinced I was here.

  ** _::So, what do you think of the place?::_** Ollie's soft mind-voice ghosted through the link.

  ** _::Ollie! It's...it's wonderful! Haven't had much time to do any exploring, though, I'm still jet-lagged. Everything all right on your end?::_**

  ** _::Absolutely. Everyone's well, I've got nine loads of laundry done and six more to go. I felt something odd in the bond earlier, is there something wrong?::_**

  ** _::Kind of, but it's something I want to tell everyone at one time so I don't have to repeat myself. It has to do with one of my experiments; Schneider discovered it looking over some of my lab reports::_ ** I replied, lying back on the bed again. **_::There's so much to see, so much to do!::_**

 Ollie laughed and said, **_::Take it easy kiddo, you've all the time in the world. I'll give you or Richard a call later in the week, okay?::_**

 I sent Ollie a warm mental “hug” and felt his presence ease away, leaving a sandalwood and amber “scented” place in the back of my head where everyone's presence lived. Till's “scent” was a minty, ocean water-soaked driftwood fire, Paul's was a vibrant scent that reminded me of Russian tea and red roses, Flake's was an odd combination of the way a library full of old books smelled with a hint of beeswax candles, Schneider's was a sunshine filled meadow of Spring wildflowers with a tang of the ozone that comes after a lightning strike, and Richard's was a bouquet of anise, cinnamon and vanilla with the merest hint of sandalwood. I had no clue what mine was, I couldn't tell and I'd never asked any of the boys. Arielle's was still too light for me to detect, but Paul had said something about lavender, pink roses and lilacs. I could sense her in that safe, protected spot in my head but that was it so far.

 “Daydreaming, baby girl?” Richard said as he padded into the room, shaking snow from his hair. I raised my eyebrow and he snort-laughed, “There was a tree branch right over the doorway full of snow and a squirrel decided to run across it right as I was walking underneath. Schneider's probably still laughing.”

 I rolled over and buried my face in the pillows, laughing so hard I thought I was going to pee myself.  My beloved looked adorable, cheeks pinked with cold, hair spiky from his hands running through it to knock the snow out of it, the collar of his black jacket pulled up around his face to protect it from the wind. He had a bemused look on his face, dark blue eyes twinkling at me. “What? What's so funny?” he asked.

 “You look so...so adorable,” I giggled, rolling back over and sitting up again. “You look nothing like my pretty peacock princess. Nothing like the guy everyone sees in pictures, in videos. You're...”

 Richard said nothing, just shrugged out of his jacket and kicked his boots aside. Crawling up on the bed next to me, he leaned over and kissed my shoulder, stretching up enough so I could nibble on his lips and return the kiss. Warmth pooled in my stomach as desire woke within our private bond; it took no time at all for us to slip out of our clothes and wind around each other. Richard's hands were cold, I gasped when he ran his fingers over my nipples and down along my sides. I couldn't stop touching him, placing tiny kisses wherever I could reach, wanting to laugh and cry all at the same time. I pitied the rest of humanity, not being able to experience the feel of your lover’s hands on your skin, sense their emotions and thoughts, responding to unspoken wants and needs with nothing more than a touch of minds on one another.

  ** _::Lilly, love you so much::_** Richard sighed. **_::My one and only lady-love, my dearest heart::_**

  ** _::Love you too, Reesh. I'd tear down the sky for you, I'll love you forever::_** I replied, reaching down between his legs to palm his growing erection. Richard caught his breath and arched into my touch, his dark blue eyes going almost black with hunger. He pulled me up against him, pushing my head off to the side so he could nip at my throat, his teeth just this side of sharp. Worrying at the skin, he murmured something I couldn't understand, then bit down, hard. A scream tore its way out of my chest and I almost came, letting go of his length to claw at his shoulders and pull him in tighter. I'd felt my skin pop when he bit down and knew that while he hadn't hit a vein, he'd drawn blood and was suckling it away, purring as he did.

  ** _::Reesh, oh God, please, more, more...::_** I begged, dragging him over me so I could lie helpless, at his mercy. He complied, pulling his mouth away and jerking my left arm up to sink his teeth into the crook of my arm, just shy of the big veins running underneath my skin. This time I did come, screaming his name in my head and vocally, tears sliding down my face. Richard looked up, alarmed, and said, “Shit, Lilly, what have I done? Oh baby, I'm sorry!”

 “I'm okay, Reesh, please fuck me, hard, please... I need you,” I whimpered, wriggling around and trying to spread my legs. I gave up and sobbed against his shoulder, frustrated that I couldn't maneuver about and get him inside me quickly enough. “It hurts, make it go away, love me.”

 “Shh, it's okay, I'll make it stop, don't cry Lilly-love,” Richard whispered, levering himself up and far enough away to settle between my legs. “I'll go slow, if I don't I'll come and I want to be inside you for a while. Okay?”

 I nodded, trying to wipe tears from my face even though my hands shook so hard they were aching. Richard caught one of my tears on a fingertip and licked it away, a sweet smile crossing his face. He slid inside me inch by inch, biting his lip to keep from thrusting away mindlessly and once he was completely sheathed in me, rolled his hips forward, making me whimper. I locked my ankles behind his back, one hand on his hip and the other clutching the sheets underneath me. Richard grabbed that hand between his and brought it to his lips, kissing and nipping his way across and back.

  ** _::Stay with me forever::_** he sighed. **_::Stay here with me, don't ever go back to the States. Don't ever leave me::_**

  ** _::Never ever::_** I said, arching my back and writhing underneath him. **_::Harder, I'm okay, I know you want to::_**

 I got my wish, Richard locked eyes with me and thrust deeper, harder, dragging me up and over the edge with him. He shrieked out my name, hands clamping down on mine almost enough to hurt. Heat spread inside me as I came again, causing him to moan softly as we shared the last of our orgasms together. Once the final spasms faded, he slid free and laid down beside me, head on my shoulder and one arm slung around my waist. I shivered, suddenly cold, and fumbled about for the blankets. I got one of them draped over us and closed my eyes, my brain shutting down and wandering off to sleep. I heard Richard's soft chuckle as he made himself more comfortable, saying, “That's my job, roll off of you after sex and fall asleep.”

 And I drifted into dreamland, a smile on my face, warm, safe, and happy.

 ::

 The smell of something sweet and delicious woke me up about an hour later. I sat up, wincing at the ache in my neck and arm, and almost swearing out loud when I saw how big and deep the bruise on my arm was. I didn't have to look in a mirror to know that my neck looked just as abused and resigned myself to wearing high-necked shirts or a scarf until that bruise faded. I made a quick stop in the bathroom to clean up, then pulled on a pair of warm leggings and a lightweight sweater, both in a faded shade of green, and slid my feet into my favorite pair of tie-dyed socks. The psychedelic colors didn't quite match the rest of my clothes but I didn't mind, they were warm, comfy and fuzzy. I made my way towards the kitchen where the lovely smells were coming from and found Richard busy making French toast. A nice-sized pile of bacon was steaming happily away next to a covered dish that I found was full of scrambled eggs with cheese. And to top it off, there was a tall glass full of Coke, bubbling and fizzing. I took a long drink of the soda, closing my eyes happily as the cold liquid hit my stomach and woke me up fully. Richard laughed at me and began dishing up the French toast, waving the spatula he was using and said, “Dig in before it gets cold. Do you want syrup or icing sugar on your French toast?”

 “Sugar, please,” I replied, plucking a piece of bacon from the pile and sighing happily at the taste. Thanks to becoming a Changeling, my metabolism was high so I could plow through food like a lumberjack without gaining more than a pound. I still worked out to keep limber but it was wonderful to be able to stuff myself once in a while and not worry about calories or cholesterol. Once we'd portioned out the eggs, bacon and French toast, Richard settled down next to me at the breakfast table that was tucked into a corner of the kitchen. I kissed his nose and said, “Thank you sweetheart. You didn't have to do any of this.”

 “It's your turn next time,” he said, pressing a kiss to my lips. “I was starving and I don't think chocolate chip cookies are the best thing for breakfast.”

 “Why not? I used to eat cold spaghetti on buttered bread for breakfast when I was in college.”

 “Ugh! Separately I could understand but together? Ew.”

 “Hey Kruspe, don't knock it till you've tried it,” I said, shoving gently at Richard's shoulder. “I'm sure you boys have put together some weird concoctions in your time. “ _And_ have had cookies for breakfast too.”

 “You've got me there. Ollie makes these awesome molasses and ginger cookies for Christmas. They're the size of my hand and if you manage not to eat them the day he's made them, they're wonderful the second day. And he won't give any of us the recipe for them either no matter how hard we've tried!”

 I had to laugh at Richard's somewhat wounded tone; I said, “I was an assistant to one of my professors in college whose mom made the best lemon bars in the world and she was the same way. I've tried to make them myself but I've never been able to do as well as she did. I'll make them for you someday, I think you'll like them.”

 “Keep 'em away from Schneider, he'll eat the whole pan. We've had a couple of caterers who've made lemon bars and I swear he was going to go to war with Paul over the last one,” Richard said, a grin spreading across his face. “He was holding the pan up over his head where Paul couldn't reach it and I thought Paul was going to climb him like a tree to get at it. Flake made them split it so they'd quit yelling, I think.”

 I could picture Paul jumping up and down with Schneider holding a cake pan over his head and taunting him, and I had to bite back a giggle so I wouldn't choke on what I was eating. “I'll make sure to bake enough so Paul won't have to beat Chris up over the last lemon bar. That could be tragic.”

 “And funny.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bit of kinkyness here!


	4. Chapter 4

The afternoon was a languid one; in between doing enough laundry so we wouldn't go naked (although I'm sure Richard wouldn't have minded), putting things away that had been shoved into suitcases for weeks and napping, I found myself curled up on one of the two couches in the living room, watching the sun shining off of the spire of the _Fernsehturm_ in the distance. You could see the top of the Brandenburg Tor from the apartment, the stones that made up the Gate glowing a mellow gold in the afternoon light. I itched to be out and about but Richard still seemed quite jet-lagged, so I curbed my need to explore and settled down to watch the sun set over Berlin. My iPad lay forgotten on a nearby table as well as my iPod, the earbuds dangling off the table and moving slowly back and forth in the warm breeze coming from the heating vent nearby. Richard was stretched out on the other couch, wrapped up in a blanket and sound asleep. He'd tried to insist on doing laundry but I felt his tiredness like it was my own and when he stumbled one time too many for my liking, I'd ordered him to simply show me how the machines worked and ordered him to go take a nap. He was so deeply asleep he didn't even snore which spoke volumes on how exhausted he was.

As I sat in the dying light, I thought back to what Richard had said to me in the heat of our lovemaking earlier. He'd begged me to never leave him; he'd called me _his_ lady-love and had said he'd never leave me. Which was all well and good, but how was Christoph going to fit into all of this? The idea of him and Richard being lovers in the past and their relationship beginning anew didn't bother me as much as I'd thought it would. I'd said that my views on relationships wasn't like other people's and I meant it. I knew if my adopted parents were still alive they'd hit the ceiling over being involved with two men at once but I no longer cared.  They'd raised me, given me a roof over my head but as far as loving me, they never had. I was a burden to be gotten rid of quickly and their deaths, which happened when I was working on my Master's degree, had been a tiny bump in the road. My co-workers and fellow students hadn't understood why I wasn't paralyzed by grief and I'd never tried to explain it. I was called cold-hearted, a bitch, an unfeeling monster. I would have thrown away all my education and intelligence just to have my foster parents tell me they loved me _once_.

"Enough dredging up the past, stupid woman,” I mused, picking up my mug of now-cold tea and drinking the last of it. While I loved Richard with everything I had, there was a corner of my heart that a certain drummer had sneaked into and was starting to occupy. I'd never admitted it until now; those odd greeny-blue eyes, shy smile and fiercely loving heart that Christoph had made me melt like ice in the Spring. Like Richard, he’d been married once but it hadn’t worked out and had ended in a nasty divorce, leaving him a wreck for weeks that had scared the daylights out of the rest of the band. He’d been morose, sullen and withdrawn to the point that Paul and Flake had made it a point for some time to stop by in the evenings to make sure Christoph hadn’t done something stupid to himself. He’d snapped out of his funk after a while but I could sense that deep inside he had scars that would take a very long time to heal, if ever. We made a perfect triad, all of us scarred, broken and clumsily mended back together.

I was sorting my underwear into “hand wash” and “throw it in the washer and hope for the best” when Richard poked his head around the laundry room door, wolf-whistling at the pile of silky panties I was shoving into a lingerie bag. “I hope I get to see you in and out of those soon,” he said, leaning on the door frame and smiling like the cat that not only has the canary but a bowl of milk and a fish as well.

“Not everything I own is this fancy,” I replied, dropping the mesh bag into the washer with the rest of the delicates I'd judged to be sturdy enough to withstand the machine. “I just bought these before we left the States; I was running out of my old, reliable cotton panties and these were the only ones I could find that fit and didn't give me a perpetual wedgie.”

Richard slapped himself gently on the forehead and sighed, “Damn it, I meant to show you the closets when we got home. I didn't mean to not do it, I just forgot.”

“That's all right, I figured you'd show me where to stow my gear eventually,” I replied, setting the machine to the wash cycle I wanted and checking on the laundry that was tumbling away in the dryer. I followed Richard back to the bedroom where he opened one of the huge, dark oak doors across from the bed with a flourish. “You'll never believe it but this closet has been empty ever since I moved in. And you know what a clotheshorse I am.”

If there was an earthly version of heaven for a clotheshorse, this closet was it. It was a huge walk-in affair with shelves galore, shoe racks, and drawers for everything from undies to jewelry. I stood just inside, mouth hanging open, trying to imagine how in the world I'd ever fill it up. I turned to Richard, eyes wide, and stammered, “And yours is as big as this one? And you've never filled this one up?”

“Yep. I used to keep some of my stage clothes here but now I only keep a few things like jackets and such,” Richard said, pulling open the other set of doors and clicking the lights on. I knew before I laid eyes on the closet that it would be immaculately organized and I was right. Hesitantly, I walked into the sweet-smelling space, running my fingers over jackets that probably cost more than any of the fanciest clothes I'd ever owned, spotting the long jacket he'd worn on the “Made In Germany” tour as well as the one from the “Volkerball” tour. The boy certainly knew how to dress to show himself off to the nines; I spent a moment or two envying some of his shirts and boots that I knew I might be able to fit in.

“So. Do you want me to help you put things up in your closet?” Richard asked me, breaking me out of my drooling over a pair of his knee-high boots that had ornate silver buckles up the side in the shape of tiny skulls. I looked up, blushing, and said, “Sure. Sorry, I was falling in love with these boots.”

“Oh my God, I totally forgot I had those!” Richard said, taking one of the boots and turning it over in his hands. “Paul and I wandered into a Hot Topic in the middle of nowhere back on the “Made In Germany” tour and we both got the same boots. I don't know why we were there in the first place but yeah, we have matching boots. I've only worn them once and I don't know if Paul ever wore his.”

“I think my feet would fit in them,” I said, peering at the shoe size stamped on the tongue of the boot and comparing it with my own foot. “Yeah, better lock those babies up good, you might miss them.”

“Hey, if they fit, you're welcome to wear them,” Richard laughed, handing the boot back to me. “Better that someone get a bit of use out of them. They're kind of heavy so I wouldn't advise wearing them on a walking tour of the city unless you're training for a marathon that goes up the Matterhorn and back down.”

Organizing my closet didn't take long; most of my clothes were still in storage and I'd yet to make it over to the facility to get them out. However, I did fill up the two jewelry cupboards with all my bracelets, necklaces and the like, enjoying how they sparkled in the warm light from the ceiling fixtures above. Richard was running a double strand of pearls over in his fingers, admiring them, and said, “Antique, or I'll miss my guess.”

“I bought them at an estate sale for my graduation from nursing school,” I said, remembering the afternoon I'd wandered into a part of town I'd never been in on an afternoon stroll. I'd come upon the estate sale and out of curiosity, had gone through the house to see what was available. The pearls had been mis-marked as costume jewelry and I'd paid around a hundred dollars for them. When I took them to the local jewelry store to have them checked over and re-strung if needed, the elderly gentleman who ran the store had told me they were worth close to a thousand dollars due to their color and that each pearl was almost perfect. I'd had them restrung and a new clasp put on and only took them out for special occasions. Richard's eyes widened as I told him how I'd gotten the pearls and when I was done, he carefully hung them up on a hook next to my other necklaces. “They're beautiful. I bought Khira Li a pearl pendant when I was in Hawai'i about ten years ago and she still wears it. It's about the size of my thumb, set in gold, and I think the pearl's kind of a pinky-gold color.”

I hung the last necklace up next to the pearls and closed the jewelry cabinet door, dropping the tiny brass handle into place with a soft “click.” Richard dug around in one of the drawers I hadn't gotten to yet and handed me a small grey envelope that a pair of dull brass keys fell out of. “Those are for the jewelry cabinets. They're the same key, I've got one stowed away in my office desk and the other's on my keyring. And before I forget to, let me go fetch your keys for the house. Come on, you haven't seen the rest of the place.”

Richard's office-cum-studio was tucked away in what had once been a sun room. The office itself sat under the glass roof, while the recording studio was shoehorned into the farthest corner of the room. Richard pointed at the heavy, soundproofed door and said, “I had it put there because that's the outside corner of the building and all the stones make it as soundproofed as you'd get in a pro studio. Then I had the rest of the room built up around it and voila!” The studio was as state of the art as you could get with all kinds of gadgets and a computer that I knew was state of the art and almost as powerful as the ones Vis-Tek purchased right before I was fired. I rubbed my hands together greedily and said, “You realize that computer gear like this for me is almost porn.”

“You and Ollie, I swear,” Richard snorted, shutting the studio door and leading me back to the office part of the room. There was a multi-outlet charging port for his laptop and various other electronic devices, shelves to the ceiling full of books, papers, awards from all over the world, photographs and some knick-knacks like a tiny, cobalt blue bud vase that was intricately etched to glisten like a gemstone. The desk was a simple one, a dark oak to match the rest of the wood in the house, and Richard's office chair could have qualified for a miniature throne. I giggled to myself at the thought, making myself keep a neutral face and the thought tucked away where he wouldn't sense it and wonder why I was giggling. There was a large couch that was twice the size of the ones in the living room; Richard plopped down on it and said, “It folds out into a bed if you need an extra one but I've slept in here just as it is. Till's crashed here a couple of times and he keeps threatening to steal it every chance he gets.”

“I don't blame him,” I said, joining him on the couch and sinking into its soft warmth with a happy sigh. “It's like sitting on a cloud.”

“Well, when you spend most of a year in hotels from five star to roach motel, you want something comfy when you get home. At least I do. Call me a hedonist but hey, I worked for all of this, why not make your home as comfortable as you can?”

“Nothing wrong with wanting to be comfy,” I commented, stretching out so I could lay my head on Richard's lap with my toes buried underneath the couch pillows. “My house was my nest. I could lock the door on Friday evening and not have to leave until Monday morning if I wanted. And I did a lot of that towards the end of my working for Vis-Tek. I was so burnt out I didn't have the energy to look for anything else in my field but the money was so good I stayed. Maybe getting fired was a blessing but I could have done without the whole kidnapping, rape and abuse I went through.”

Richard ran his hand over my hair and down my shoulder and murmured, “Yeah, I can understand. But there's a silver lining in all that madness.”

“What?”

“You met me, I met you and now look at us.”

Snuggling against Richard's tummy, I sighed and reached up for his hand to plant kisses all over it. “You're right about that.”

“Of course I am. I’m right about everything, haven’t you figured that out yet?”

I poked Richard in the side until he began to giggle and fight my hands off. Poking turned to tickling, which reduced him to a blob on the floor, begging for mercy in between gales of laughter. I had to give up eventually, for Richard grabbed my left ankle and tugged at it until I lost my balance and toppled to the sofa. He kept a death grip on my ankle and dragging my sock off, began rubbing the soles of my feet, gently cracking my toes and rotating my ankle until I sighed and said, “Okay, I won’t tickle you anymore. As long as you keep that up and do the other foot as well.”

“Your wish is my command, my lady,” he replied, sitting up and putting his back to the coffee table so he could work on my feet and not have to do it from a prone position on the floor. I don’t know how long we sat there, Richard making my feet happy and me drifting aimlessly from one thought to another, but when he was done, evening was coming on fast and the “cycle done” buzzer on the dryer was chiming away. I saw him wince at the noise; he said, “It’s in E, but it’s just this side of too sharp. I have relative pitch and it drives me insane. Makes me get off my ass and attend to the laundry, though. Flake will turn the damn thing off when he’s over here, he has perfect pitch and I won’t tell you what he says. You can probably guess.”

“Something unflattering about both machine and owner, am I right?” I said, propping my feet up on the couch. “I can’t really tell. I can sing and I can tell when someone’s off pitch but not like you guys. I wondered why sometimes during the tour you’d make a horrid face at Till or Paul and Flake would go off at one of you afterwards. Now I know.”

“It’s a blessing and a curse. You’re born with perfect pitch, you can learn relative pitch,” Richard replied, climbing to his feet to wander over to the windows and look out over the city. “Hey, if you’re hungry, we can go grab something nearby and maybe look around the neighborhood a bit before it gets really dark?”

“Sure!” I said, jumping up from the sofa and trotting towards the little room that the washer and dryer were in. “Let me pull this pile of stuff out of the dryer and put something warmer on, and I’ll be right with you.”

“Yeah, I guess I should too. It’s already cold out there and once the sun goes down it’ll turn downright nasty,” Richard said, following me down the hall and into the bedroom. “Where’s your winter coat?”

“That windbreaker I wore over here is heavy enough, I’ll put a couple layers on underneath,” I called from the laundry. “I can handle the cold to a certain point. Heat, not so much.”

“Yeah, I noticed that you stayed away from the fire effects and out of the sun a lot,” Richard’s muffled voice came from somewhere in the bedroom. “Not me, it gets below 12 ⁰C and I’m shivering. Till’s impermeable to heat or cold. I’ve seen him swimming in his lake when he’s had to break about a centimeter or two of ice off the top before getting in and he comes out all happy. Me, I’m in front of the stove screaming at him that he’s gonna get frostbite on something delicate someday and regret it. He just laughs at me.”

I quickly finished folding up the sweaters and heavy socks that were both Richard’s and mine and put the last load in, thankfully a load of silky things like nightdresses and undies. They could wait till we got back, so I set the basket on top of the washer and headed for the bedroom to dress in warmer clothes. I pulled on a pair of warm, wool tights on underneath a heavy pair of leggings, put my fuzzy socks back on, and shrugged into a thermal top, adding one of the sweaters I’d just taken from the dryer over that. I got my hair wrangled into a tail that would stay up under a hat, found my hiking sneakers in their new home in the closet and once bundled almost to the eyes, slid into my windbreaker and sat down on the coffee table to wait for Richard to finish dressing. When he came out of the bedroom he was as bundled up as I was, black, spiky hair hidden under a knit cap that nearly fell over his eyes and snuggled into an anorak that was as puffy as a down pillow. He’d put on eyeliner (of course!) and smelled lovely, which made me hide a smile. Even if it was out to grab something quick, he still kept his image up. I dug my tiny “travelers” wallet out of my backpack, pushed my keys, cell phone and a tube of lip balm into my jeans pocket, and following Richard, we trooped out of the apartment and down onto the evening streets. I thickened up my shielding as we rode down the elevator as a precaution; I didn’t know how I’d react to being in such a big, unknown city and didn’t want to have a freak-out in the middle of a crowd. As we walked out of the building, Richard slid his hand into mine with a shy smile.

**_::You don’t mind?::_** he asked. **_::’Cause if it makes you uncomfortable…:_**

**: _:Not as all, Reesh. Come on, show me some food now or I’m going to eat your hat::_**

**_::Okay, but I wouldn’t advise it. Too much fiber::_ **

I stifled a laugh and turned it into a cough quickly, making an elderly man give me a funny look as we walked by. I said nothing, just paraded along with Richard, admiring the bright lights and sights of his neighborhood. He pointed out several shops that were closed for the night that he liked---a florist’s with its windows full of holiday flowers, a confectionery shop, a bakery that was still oozing the wonderful scents of baked goodies, and a bookstore that looked as if it had been in the same location for centuries. I took it all in, not noticing how Richard looked at me with a smile on his face at how dazzled and excited I was. The air was just cold enough to give it a pleasant ‘snap’ and turn your cheeks and nose red, but not so cold that you couldn’t enjoy it.

We finally stopped at a tiny café that Richard obviously frequented; when we walked through the door, the grey-haired lady behind the counter called him by name and came around to hug him. “Richard, good to see you again! Where have you been? Out touring?”

“And it’s lovely to see you too, Maria. Yeah, over in the States for the past few months. Can I have my usual table if it’s not much trouble?”

“Not at all. And who is this lovely lady?” Maria asked as she led us to a table near a merrily crackling fireplace. Richard helped me out of my jacket, scarf and hat before replying; as he slid out of his outerwear he said, “Maria Voorhees, this is Lilly Bailey. She was our doctor on the tour and has moved over here from the States to keep my butt in line. Mostly.”

Maria smiled at me, her grey eyes shining as we shook hands. She was tall and graceful in the way of someone who’s practiced ballet or something similar; in black pants and a short-sleeved tunic top and boots she was aristocratic. “I’m glad to meet you, Lilly. Now, what brings you two out here on a cold night?”

“I’m showing her around the neighborhood,” Richard said. “We haven’t had a lot of time for much of anything but sleep and laundry; didn’t get back into town until a couple nights ago. We’ve got till past the holidays on vacation, thankfully. So, what’s on the menu tonight?”

“We’ve chicken soup, homemade this morning, a meat pasty I whipped up an hour ago, that wheat bread you like and I think I could find something in the freezer or pantry for dessert to celebrate your emigrating here, Lilly,” Maria said, dropping a wink at me. I smiled at Maria, liking her instantly. “It sounds lovely. Could I have some tea, first?”

“Ah, a tea lover! We have a nice selection, from something light to enough caffeine to keep you awake for a week,” Maria said, handing me a heavy cardstock paper with an impressive list of teas. No teabags here, they were all loose-leaf and all quality names. I flickered through the list quickly and said, “The orange pekoe with blackberry looks good. I can handle the caffeine, I was a nurse for years and you live on caffeine.”

“You know what, I’ll have the same,” Richard said, surprising me. He wasn’t the tea drinker I was, although he was enamored by sweet tea made the way it’s done in the American South. “I’m about coffee-d out, truth be told.”

“Tea it is, and I’ll have the soup out in a moment,” Maria replied, patting Richard’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you back. When are the rest of the band going to come by? Let me know and I’ll make up a sampler platter of cheesecakes just for all of you.”

“Thank you, Maria! I’m not sure when we’re meeting back up, but I’ll give you a few days’ warning. I don’t want the Mongol horde coming down like the plague on your café. And I’m not talking about the band, although when Till gets started, he could make Genghis Khan run for his life.”

Maria nodded and vanished behind a heavily patterned curtain, leaving us to get warm and me to look around the café. It looked as if it would hold no more than twenty-five people comfortably, the tables and chairs made of some kind of light wood and the seats of the chairs padded heavily with the same type of material the curtain between the seating area and kitchen was made from. The brick walls were painted an off-white shade, with abstract paintings hung here and there. The room was lit softly with a pair of brass chandeliers, and the flickering fire behind us gave off more than enough light to see by. The tables were set with tiny bouquets of carnations and roses in shades of red, with a few sprigs of baby’s breath to set off the color. I leaned in and breathed in their sweet scent, closing my eyes and humming happily. “I love roses,” I said, caressing the petals of the rose I’d been smelling. “I always wanted a rose garden but I never had the time or the yard space to do anything.”

“I didn’t show you yet but there’s a teeny-tiny garden right off the kitchen,” Richard said, taking my hand and rubbing his thumb over the back. “I’ve never done anything out there other than stick a chair outside when it’s warm and hang out. There’s room for a container garden and if you want, in the Spring…”

“Really?” I said, blinking in surprise.

“Yes. And I’ll even get my pretty fingers dirty to help out,” he replied, wrinkling his nose at me. “Of course we can’t let management know, they throw a fit anytime I do something that will, quote, “possibly cause harm or damage” to my hands. I swear to God, they make me insane 90% of the time. The other 10% I’m already insane.”

I snorted at his dry tone, my comment interrupted by the clatter of dishes and silverware. Marie appeared from behind the curtain, holding a serving tray with two teacups, a pitcher with moisture on the sides that had to be milk or cream, a tiny bowl of sugar cubes, another tiny bowl of lemon wedges and the tea ball sitting on its own porcelain saucer. Setting them on the table, she went behind the counter and brought out a lovely porcelain teapot that had edelweiss curling around its snow-white surface. Once that was to her liking, she said, “Soup will be here in five minutes, and the pasty will be about fifteen minutes. I’ll bring the bread out with the soup, is that okay?”

I nodded and I dropped the tea ball into the teapot, laying its chain along the slot in the side of the teapot and replacing the lid. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, set the timer for five minutes, and sat back to enjoy the slowly developing aroma of good tea. Richard took a smell and said, “That smells great! What was it again, orange pekoe and…blackberry?”

“Got it in one. You won’t have to over sugar it to make it taste good. I recognize the brand and it’s really good with a---maybe---teaspoon or less of sugar and no milk. Or lemon. I’m surprised, I didn’t think you’d drink anything but Southern style iced tea.”

“It’s been known to happen from time to time. Germans are more coffee drinkers than tea, I guess. I’ve had green tea in Japan that would knock your socks off though. It’s so delicate you’d swear you wouldn’t be able to taste anything but its lovely. Schneider drinks it with ginger and honey when he gets sick. I think he got hooked on it when we were in Japan and he came down with some stomach bug. It was the only way we could get fluids into him when he started having migraines almost every day on the “Made In Germany” tour. Poor guy, he went all over the bloody place trying to find a doctor who’d treat the migraines and not drug him to the eyeballs. I don’t think he’s had one since, well, you know.”

“He never mentioned any,” I said, the soft chiming of the timer on my phone letting me know the tea was done steeping. Carefully removing the tea ball from the teapot, I put it on its little saucer and poured the tea out. The rich scents of well-grown, carefully harvested tea and dried blackberries wafted up from my cup, putting a smile on my face as I gently added a sugar cube to the liquid. Richard did the same and said, “It had better cool down soon or I’m gonna get ahead of myself and drink it boiling hot!”

“It won’t take long, these cups are really thin and the heat will dissipate quicker than it will in a heavy mug,” I said. Maria came back into the room, carrying two heavy bowls full to the rim with chicken soup; I saw chunks of carrots, potatoes and celery floating along with even thicker chunks of chicken. The bread followed with rich, sweet butter to melt on top, and for several minutes all I did was immerse myself in the warmth and wonderful flavors. The tea cooled enough to be safe to drink and the first taste was heavenly. Richard looked up from his soup, eyebrow quirked, and I said, “Lovely. Absolutely lovely. Try yours when you can, I think you’ll like it.”

Richard’s raised eyebrow soon had a twin once he tasted the tea. “Wow, you’re right, this is nice! And it’s not boring or nasty like I’ve had before. I really think I could get into tea if it was like this. Or if you made it.”

I laughed at him and went back to my soup, realizing that I’d missed homemade food for so long. Working as I did, I never had the chance to make anything for myself, relying on stuff I could pull out of the freezer and microwave or fast food eaten on the run. Although the catering on the tour had been excellent, nothing came close to this. Now that I was settled, I could probably get back into the swing of things. Richard must have sensed my train of thought for he said, “I can cook more than French toast, you know.”

“Being a single dad and a single guy for so long I imagine you can,” I replied, setting my spoon into the empty soup bowl and buttering a piece of bread. “I just got out of the habit because of the way I worked. I’m surprised I don’t have scurvy or something as awful.”

“Well, I’ve yet to make somebody sick with my cooking, so I guess you’re next on the list of victims,” Richard said with a wink. I was giggling over his comment when Maria returned with the meat pasty, setting it in front of us with a flourish. She collected the empty soup bowls and said, “I’ve found a surprise in the pantry for you two. Enjoy your dinner and let me know when you’re ready for dessert.”

We thanked her and dug into the pasty, its flaky, buttery crust complimenting the beef, lamb and vegetable filling which was rich with gravy. There was just enough to fill us up but not too much that we couldn’t enjoy dessert, and what Maria brought out would have been a sin to forego. It was two slices of stollen, full of fruits and nuts, with a heavy dusting of icing sugar on the top. I’d had stolen before but this was the real deal, and it took a great amount of willpower not to grab my slice in my greedy hands and bolt it down like a little kid. The fruits were dried and reconstituted, not in thick, gooey syrup, and the nuts were as fresh as they could be. By the time we were done, I was blinking sleepily and so was Richard. We had a last cup of tea for the walk home, and after getting another hug from Maria after paying the bill, we were back out on the streets, lazily following the crowd back home. We were holding hands like teenagers, enjoying the night, when a soft noise came from an alleyway that stopped me cold.

Huddled in a ragged cardboard box, sitting on a thin blanket were a pair of kittens, one snow white with pure green eyes and the other a dark grey with bright blue eyes I walked over to the kittens, slowly, as not to scare them, and knelt in the snow. Pulling my gloves off, I held out a hand for them to sniff, and soon had them both rubbing my hand and purring. I couldn’t see any other cats around, nor did I see any signs of where they could have come from; the unhappy realization came that they’d been abandoned to fend on their own. My heart broke and before I could stop myself I said in a voice choked with tears, “Are you allowed to have pets?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why?” Richard said, obviously very confused as to my skittering away from him so suddenly. He peered over my shoulder and saw the poor kittens trying to climb up my jacket sleeve and I felt a harsh stab of sorrow rip through him. “Oh fuck, you poor little things,” he said softly, reaching over to pet the white kitten on the head. “Come here darling, let’s get you somewhere warm. I think there’s a woman on the third floor who has cats, I’ll ask her if she can spare some cat food and litter for a night or so.”

So, with a white kitten snuggled into his jacket and the grey kitten tucked into mine, we hurried back to the apartment with our new friends, never saying a word about how they might destroy the apartment, how we were going to have to get used to all the silliness a kitten can come up with, nothing. All Richard seemed intent on was getting the kittens home and fed, and I was trotting along behind him, amused to bits over his behavior.

We reached his floor with not a peep from our new acquaintances. Handing the white kitten to me, Richard said, “I’ll let you guys in and run downstairs to see if Emily’s home. If not, I’m gonna have to make a run somewhere to get cat litter.” I nodded and took the semi-napping kitten from Richard, tucking it in with its littermate to take his outerwear. With a wave, Richard hopped back on the elevator and I went inside the apartment, throwing his outerwear on the couch and carrying the kittens into the laundry room, which seemed to be the safest place for them right now. There were no loose wires or sharp edges for a kitten to get entangled in or knock into, the washer and dryer were built into cabinets that had no spaces big enough for a kitten to squeeze into, it was warm, had a door and a slate floor which would make cleaning kitten messes up easily. I set the kittens down on the floor, shut the door and wiggled out of my jacket, hat and scarf, then sat down on the floor. The kittens seemed to be old enough not to need their mother’s milk any more, and a quick check showed that they were both females. They explored the room with eagerness, making little squeak-meows and purring as they went about the room. I’d never had any pets growing up and had wanted a cat badly, and now, it looked like I had two.

I must have fallen asleep for the next thing I knew, Richard was tapping on the laundry room door and calling my name. I started to sit up, saw that the kittens were curled up on my hip, and said softly, “I’m a bit stuck at the moment. I have kittens on me that are sleeping and I don’t know if I can move and not wake them up.”

“Well, I’ve got the litter, litter pan and a nice supply of kitten food. Emily was just on her way out to work and said if we needed anything else, just call her. She’s a paramedic and works late hours. Do you want to set the kittens up in there?”

“Sure, it’s safe, warm and easy to clean up,” I replied, slowly wiggling around until I could sit up enough to let Richard in the room. He slid around the door, scooped the kittens up without waking them and that allowed me to get up. While he held them, I set up the litter box, then went into the spare bedroom and found a small cardboard box that I lined with an old scarf and a couple of towels from the bathroom. When I returned, Richard was in the living room, cuddling the kittens and talking softly to them. I tiptoed past and put the kitten’s new bed near the door and came back out to join him on the couch.

“I’ve wanted a cat for a long time,” Richard whispered. “We had one when Khira Li was little but I never had the chance to get another one. I wonder how old these little ones are?”

“Well, they’re girls, first off. I checked. I’d say they’re just old enough to be weaned but not by much. We should get them to a vet first thing for shots and get them fixed, among other things. Have any ideas about names?” I said.

“I like Fiona for the white kitten,” Richard said, gently petting her between the ears. “How about you name the grey?”

I sat and thought for a moment, running my fingers over the grey kitten’s tail and feeling her soft fur. “I like the name Marley. Do you think it’ll fit her?”

The newly-named Fiona woke, a huge yawn showing us her pink tongue and sharp white teeth. She looked up at Richard and squeak-meowed at him, then at me. Her sister woke up as well, and when I said, “Hello Marley. Hello, Fiona,” they both squeak-meowed at me. I laughed and picked Marley up, letting her settle back down on my chest where she carefully groomed one of her feet. Fiona had rolled onto her back where she lay on Richard’s arm and he was tickling her stomach carefully, obviously charmed by the way she was padding the air and slow-blinking at him.

“Schneider won’t have any trouble with these, will he?” I asked, remembering how he’d had a not-so-great relationship with an old girlfriend’s cat. Richard shook his head, saying, “Not any more. He babysits Flake’s cats, and his mother has a few. It took him a long time not to be nervous around them. Hell, he gets hate mail every once in a while about that cat thing and it hurts him a lot. He’s more of a dog person but he likes cats. He had to put down his old Corgi before the tour started and he was hurting over that. So…maybe these little ladies will charm the daylights out of him.”

“I don’t think they’ll have any trouble doing it,” I said, watching the kittens play and groom themselves.

 


	5. Chapter 5

We let Marley and Fiona wander about the apartment for most of the evening. At one point, Richard reluctantly excused himself to go catch up on some e-mails he hadn't gotten to when we arrived two nights ago, leaving me sitting in the living room with one kitten sprawled out in front of the air vent near the window and the other sniffing her way around the room, her purring loud enough to be heard over the gentle noise of the dryer tumbling away in the laundry room and the faint whisper of warm air from the vents. I kept one eye on them while I idly paged through a couple books I’d downloaded for my iPad. I stretched out on the floor and watched Fiona pounce on her sister's tail, which set off a kitten fight that made me laugh myself sick. I wanted to reach over and separate them but I knew I'd end up with a hand covered with nasty little scratches. Instead, I watched them go from fighting to playing, their growling turning into purring. Eventually, Fiona toddled over and laid down next to me, falling asleep almost instantly. Marley soon joined us, only she flopped down onto her back and began padding the air happily. I stroked her tummy carefully, not wanting to irritate her, which only made her purr louder.

“How are we getting along?” Richard's voice came from behind me. He was leaning over the sofa, smiling at the three of us. “I could hear you laughing and I got jealous, I just had to come out and see what was going on.”

“So far we haven't had any accidents. I put their food bowls just outside the laundry room underneath that table you have the phone chargers on and they figured out where the litter box was really fast. I don't think we're going to have any trouble with litter training. Getting them to stay out of the bedroom, that might be a problem if you don't want them in there.”

“Well, if they won't stay out when we're busy, they'll learn,” Richard said, sitting down next to Fiona and patting her head with one finger. She cracked open one green eye, chirruped and went back to sleep. Marley clambered up into his lap, wanting attention, and eventually made her way up his arm to snuggle down under his left ear. Richard bit back a giggle, not wanting to disturb her. “She's so fuzzy!” he snorted.

“Do you want me to rescue you?” I said, holding back my own laughter.

“No, she's fine. I get the feeling I'm going to need to get used to being cat furniture, though.”

As we prepared for bed, the kittens wandered in and out of the bedroom, unsure as to what their new humans were doing. I sat down on my side of the bed and said, “Reesh, do you want to let them in here with us?”

“Sure, why not. Leave the door open and let’s hope they remember where the litter box is,” he replied sleepily. We curled up in each other's arms, waiting to see what the kittens would do and within a half an hour, the kittens were snuggled down between us, half under the blankets and purring softly. I drifted into dreamland to the sound of purring and Richard's almost-inaudible murmuring to them.

:::::::

The next morning I woke up to the sound of Till's laughter coming from the kitchen. “ _Kittens_. You have kittens in your sink _,_ Richard.”

“Lilly and I rescued them last night. We were on our way home from Marie's and Lilly heard them crying in the alleyway. Poor things, it was bitter cold last night; they wouldn't have made it through the night. They were in a box with a towel and that was it. We couldn't let them freeze and I've always wanted a couple of cats, so there you have it.”

“They're lovely. And they look to be not all that old either. What did you name them?”

“The white one is Fiona and the grey is Marley. They're both girls, which means as soon as we can, they have to go to the vet so if they wander off they won't be popping out kittens. I think Fiona likes you, Till.”

When I walked into the kitchen, I had to hide a smile at the sight of seeing Till with Fiona sniffing his neck and purring loudly. He was shivering with the effort to hold still and not knock her off his chest despite her tickling him with her fur and whiskers. She finally decided he was acceptable and sat down on his shoulder, rubbing her delicate nose against his cheek. “Yes, you are a pretty girl, yes you are,” Till murmured, gently stroking her head with one finger. “You're going to live like a queen, do you know that? You and your sister hit the jackpot.”

Richard looked up from where he was leaning against the sink, Marley peeking her head up from the neckline of his hoodie. “Morning Lilly!” he called, coming over to kiss me, then handed Marley to me. “Hang on to the kid, I'll be right back.”

I went over to Till and gave him a hug and kiss, being careful not to squish neither of the kittens between us. “What are you doing here? I thought you'd seen enough of me to last you a couple of months!”

“I had some business downtown and figured I'd stop by long enough to see if you'd settled in all right,” Till said, lifting Fiona down from her perch and cradling her in his large hands. She seemed incredibly tiny, her bright green eyes watching everyone all at the same time. “Have you settled in? You and Reesh have a couple cats already, so I'd hazard a guess that you have.”

“Well, I still need to get over to the storage place where the last of my stuff is at, but yeah, I'm more or less settled in,” I replied, taking Till's empty coffee cup over to the pot and refilling it, handing it back and maneuvering Fiona out of harm's reach. “No, fuzzball, kittens don't drink coffee. As if you weren't hyper enough as it is!” Till snorted as he put sugar and cream into his coffee, saying, “Can't they have any cream or milk? I think I read somewhere that once kittens are weaned milk makes them sick.”

“At this age, probably wouldn't be a good idea to give them milk. I find it hard to believe cats are lactose intolerant but there you are. Besides, they've got cat food in the fridge and sometime today I'm going to try and find a pet store to get them some treats and other things they need. Thankfully Richard's neighbor had a spare litter box and food, else we'd have been going all over town trying to find a store,” I said, putting the kittens down in the living room and freshening their bowl of water. “ I wasn't allowed to have a pet growing up and I always wanted a cat. Never thought I'd get one or two this soon!” I sat back down at the kitchen table just as Richard came back from wherever he'd gotten himself off to. “I called the vet that Flake uses for his cats and the ladies have an appointment in two days in the afternoon, I wrote everything down and left the note on your side of the bed,” he said, reaching over to take my hand. Till rolled his eyes heavenward and said, “You two are going to give me diabetes. Why do you two have to be so sickening cute, especially around me?”

“Oh shut up, Lindemann,” I teased, swatting Till on the arm. “You're not the big, bad lady-killer you think you are. You're a big softie. You like cuteness and sugar and sweetness and light.”

“Ugh. Between you two and Paul and Ari, I'm going to become diabetic for sure,” Till grumbled, softening his comment with a shy smile. I knew he was all grumble and fuss, but not as much as Flake could be. They both put on such a front, pretending they were hard-hearted and stoic, but I knew better.   “Besides, I saw you getting all mushy over Fiona. That would blow your bad-ass image out of the water for sure!”

“Shhh, don't tell anyone!” Till said, eyes wide in mock alarm. “What will my mother think of me?”

I started to smart off to Till again when I saw his ocean green-blue eyes go very wide and the pupils grow almost to cover them. A brush of something went over my mental “skin” and a tiny, feminine voice said, _::Papa Till? Mama Till? No. Not the mama!::_

“What the hell?” Richard gasped, his own eyes growing big and round. He looked at me, then at Till, who was white as a sheet. “Who...what was that?”

_::Not mamma Till not papa Till. Mama Lilly, papa Reesh::_ came a second feminine voice, slightly higher and a bit louder. The three of us turned around and saw Fiona and Marley sitting just inside the kitchen door, looking at us with amusement. _::Yes? You hear us?::_

If Till could have fainted in that moment, I think he would have. He blinked, tried to speak and failed, then croaked, “Reesh, Lilly, please tell me that cats can't speak to us. Tell me I'm hallucinating or that I've hit my head and I'm punch drunk.”

Marley trotted over to Till and pawed at his foot, bright eyes sparkling. _::Till is friend. Family? Yes, family. Smell of trees and birds and good things and warm and nice. I like you. You smell like dumb dogs though. That okay. I like you::_

Fiona, not wanting to be left out, joined her sister, saying, _::Yes, family. Nice smells. Warm...paws? No, hand-paws. Soft voice, nice voice. I like you.::_

“Oh dear God,” Till groaned, leaning over to put his head on the table top. “I feel like fucking Doctor Dolittle.”

_::You mad? We done bad thing?::_ asked Fiona, clambering up Till's pants leg and up onto his chest, Marley only a moment behind. _::Not mean to do bad thing.::_

“No, sweetheart, it's just...well, humans don't usually talk to cats in their head,” Till said, gathering the kittens to him so he could look them in the eye. “We're not like normal humans. We used to be but not anymore.”

_::Can tell you not normal human::_ Marley said, her mental voice dry as the desert. _::Can smell difference. You not smell like humans we knew before. You smell like ocean and wind and water and fire. Normal human smell like alone feels::_

_::Lilly-mama smells like cookies and Reesh-papa smells like cookies too!::_ Fiona said. _::All kinds of good things. Not mean and cold like humans before, humans that left us out in cold. Smell other not-humans too in things in house::_

Richard leaned over Till's shoulder, mesmerized, and said, “How many not-humans? What do they smell like?”

Fiona tipped her head to the side in thought for a moment. _::Other not-humans? More than here. Smells like flowers and cookies and fire and breeze. Don't have all the words yet::_

It was my turn to gape at the kittens. “She must mean Ollie, Christoph, Flake and Paul,” I said. “That's how my head “sees” everyone, in a scent. Cats are both scent and sight hunters, so it makes sense.”

“So is us being able to hear the girls a new talent?” Richard asked. “Because I don't think I could handle any more surprises.”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “I'll go with the guess that we can hear the girls because we can hear each other the same way, thanks to the viruses. We'd better tell everyone else and quick.”

“I'll do it,” Till said, hauling himself up out of his chair and handing the kittens to Richard. “I'm going to borrow your office, Reesh. I think I'm gonna need a moment or two before I start calling anyone.”

Richard waved Till away, absently petting Fiona's head. “Be my guest. We'll just sit here and go quietly mad.”

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Two hours later, the rest of the band plus Arielle were sitting in the living room, staring at Fiona and Marley. They were on the coffee table, sitting pretty as you please on a pillow from the big couch in Richard’s office. No one had said more than “Hi,” since they’d walked in as a group several minutes earlier, and the air was so full of tension you could almost taste it. 

“Okay,” Ollie said, rubbing his hands together nervously. “You’re saying that these kittens can speak to you, Richard and  the same way we do with each other, Lilly?”

 I looked over at Richard, who was staring off into space, and at Till, who was nervously chewing his lower lip and glaring a hole into the carpet. “Yes. We were sitting in the kitchen when all of a sudden, Fiona started talking to us. Well, Till, first. Then Richard, then me. And then Marley added her two cents. Fiona’s voice is a little lower than Marley’s. They said something about not having all their words yet, which I’m taking to mean they haven’t been around people long enough to understand human speech very well,” I said, trying to choke down my own nervousness. My stomach was burning with nerves and I regretted the cup of strong, black tea I'd hastily drunk before everyone had arrived.

 Flake pushed his glasses up on his forehead and grumbled, “ _Great_. Yet one more fucking thing to complicate our lives. Is this ever going to stop?” His annoyance was clear as day, one didn’t need a mental bond to feel how irritated he was. He was perfectly fine the way things had been, thank you very much, and knowing that his cats would probably start to speak to him wasn’t something he wanted to deal with.

 “Look, Flake, I’m bumbling around in the dark as it is. I don’t know what we can and can’t do. My opinion is cats are pretty empathic, same probably goes for dogs and horses. I’ve always believed they can understand us, and it’s not simple things like “fetch” and “here kitty kitty,” it’s complex sentences,” I growled right back. “So stop being an asshole and go with it, okay?”

 Fiona hissed at Flake and glared at him, fur bristling and tiny claws digging into the pillow. _::I smack you like dumb dog if you make Mama Lilly mad! You’re not nice!::_

 “Well, I’m sorry for being a jerk but little one, you don’t understand. None of us were born this way and it seems like every time we turn around, we can do something that normal humans can’t…and what the hell? Is…is that Fiona?”

  _::Stupid skinny stork-not-human. Of course it’s me. Smack you like dumb bird. Don’t talk to just any human, just not-humans. Humans so dumb, not want to hear what they should hear. ::_ Fiona replied, turning her back to Flake and washing her tail. The rest of us sat staring at the two of them, not saying a word that what Fiona was saying to Flake was clear as day to everyone. _::Stork-not-human might have cats, smell like warm, fuzzy things, books, but still stupid. I mad at you for a long time::_

  **::I have a _name_ , you know::**

  _::Yes. Flake-but-also-Christian. Call you Stork-Flake anyway. Dumb as rock not-human::_

 Paul, Christoph and Ari looked at Flake, whose mouth was hanging open wide with shock, looked at the rest of us and fell into laughter. “Oh my God!” Ari giggled, leaning into her husband and wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “Oh dear God, a smart-ass cat! Flake, I think you’ve met your match!”

 “Oh hush, woman,” Flake growled, trying to hide a smile and slowly failing. “All right, all right, you folks can stop taking the piss for the moment. Fiona, I apologize for being mean to Lilly. And I’m sorry I was mean to you.”

  _::Still mad, Stork-Flake::_ Fiona replied, gazing over her shoulder at Flake, who was starting to shake with suppressed laughter. He leaned over and said “If I get you and your sister a big bag of kitten treats, will it make things better?”

  _::Deal. You still Stork-Flake for a while::_

 “Eh, I can live with that. Marley, don’t you have anything to say? Or are you mad at me too?” Flake asked, gingerly reaching a finger out to pet the top of Fiona’s head. Marley stretched a paw up to tap Flake’s finger and said _::Not mad. You are stupid non-human though. Treats will make it better::_

 “And I’m put in my place. All right. So, does this mean any cat, dog or other animal is suddenly going to start jabbering away in our heads at the most inconvenient moment?”

 Marley washed her sister’s face for a moment, obviously thinking. _::No. Not unless you speak first. Only polite. We didn’t know there were any non-humans who could talk to us. Didn’t have a chance to learn from mother before she was gone. We only two left of six. The rest of us and mother are gone.::_

 Ari, always a softie for anything small and defenseless, caught her breath at the kitten’s words. “That’s horrible. You don’t seem to be old enough to be away from your mother. “ Holding her hands out, she wiggled her fingers to get Marley’s attention, scooping the kitten up to her chest once the little grey baby was safely in her hands. “You’re very tiny. And very lucky.”

 Fiona, who wasn’t about to let an opportunity go by to be fussed over, made a giant leap into Paul’s lap, startling him. Luckily he had fast reflexes and a thick sweater on, for she landed smack in the middle of his chest and scrambled up to sit on his shoulder. Spotting his silver earrings, she chirruped and bumped them with her nose, obviously intent on playing with them till Paul said, “Nope, nope, nope, sweet thing, those aren’t to play with.” He lifted her down and sat her on his knees where she fixed her bright green eyes on Christoph. I could see him try not to flinch but he did; Fiona slowly blinked at him and said, _::I like you. You make mama Lilly and papa Reesh happy.::_

  _::That sad thing happened long, long ago. Not blame you for that::_ Marley purred, clambering out of Ari’s hands and making her way across Paul’s lap, over the arm of the sofa and into Christoph's nervous hands. She rolled over on her back, making her eyes as big as they would go and purred happily. _::You have broken spots in heart, we fix. Don’t need to be sad. Stay here, nest with mama and papa, we fix. They love you so much, will love always not like sister/brother. Always always::_

 “Uh, Schneider, Lilly, Reesh, is there something you need to tell us?”  Till asked, fixing us with a gaze that was nigh-unbreakable. I looked at Richard, who was blushing so hard he was almost purple and then at Christoph, who had turned white. He started to shake uncontrollably and before I could speak, he was up and running for the bathroom. I stood up to follow but Richard grasped my arm, stopping me. “No. Let him be for a moment.” The silence between the rest of us was uncomfortable and didn't get much better when Christoph returned, still pale and wobbly. He sat down next to me, took my hand and reached for Richard's hand as he joined us on the couch. 

 “I... _we_ wanted to wait till things settled down here before we said anything,” Richard began, gripping Christoph's hand tighter, not noticing that he was wincing from the pressure. “You guys remember how Chris and I were involved, sorta-kinda, back in the day. Well...we still have feelings for each other. And for Lilly. Both of us.”

 “Well, that solves a mystery I've been pondering for weeks,” Ollie said, eyes bright as stars. “I could sense there was something big going on with the three of you but I didn't want to say anything. It was like the threads that I can “see” that connect all of us got thicker between you three all of a sudden. Why didn't you say anything?”

 The room began to swim around me as I tried to speak and couldn't. I couldn't breathe and my eyesight began to narrow down to a tiny spot as I slid into a weird state between awareness and unconsciousness. Light flared behind my eyes as I saw our “bonds” as threads of light, all eight of them a different color and with the “scents” I associated with each of the boys. The one I didn't recognize had to be Ari's; it was a lovely lavender shade that fluctuated towards the sky blue that was Paul's, the “scent” one of lilacs, tea roses and sandalwood with a hint of Russian tea.  I fell farther into the web, brain overflowing with myriad memories and feelings, trying to “grab” onto something, anything and failing. The last thing I heard before I went completely under was Richard and Christoph screaming my name...

 ...and the world went black.

 :::

 

_I am seven years old again, trying to get my adoptive mother's attention for something. I look up into her angry eyes, seeing nothing but disgust where there should have been love. I was nothing but a burden to her and my adoptive father, her stupid sister's oddball child that she'd agreed in a moment of stupidity to care for in case something happened to her sister and brother-in-law. They died in a fiery car wreck, leaving me an orphan at the age of four. I can barely remember them now; all I have is a small plastic box with some of their pictures, my mother's college ring, my father's military paperwork, their marriage license and some other oddments. They are the only things have left of them and for some unknown reason, I am allowed to keep it in my room. It is my most precious possession._

  _“What do you want, Lilly? I'm quite busy right now and if it's not something important, I'm going to give you a spanking you won't forget!” she hisses, brandishing her favorite weapon, a heavy wooden spoon, at me. I stare up at her, terrified, and whisper, “Here's my report card. You or Father need to sign it so Miss Marshall knows I brought it home.”_

  _She snatches the report card from my hand, a sour smile coming over her narrow, cold face as she reads the marks. “Well. All “A” marks. Be glad they are or you'd be standing up to eat for the next few months. I'll sign it and so will your father when he gets home. Now go away and do something quiet so I don't have to hear or see you till dinnertime.”_

  _I never get a congratulatory hug, never a word of praise from either of them the 18 years I live with them. I grow a hard shell around my heart, never letting anyone in, never trusting anyone. I immerse myself in my work, ignoring the nights I spend lying awake and crying because I am so alone or standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a razor blade in my hand, trying to get the courage up to slice my wrists open. I never feel safe or loved...until now._

  _I look up into the star-filled sky, feeling a cool breeze ghosting over my skin. I turn at the sound of footsteps coming across the sea grass-filled sand dunes and see Richard and Chris coming my way, both in their costumes from the “Reise Reise” tour. Richard's long coat brushes the purple and grey sea-grass aside, leaving a whisper of light behind. The starlight catches the spangles and silver threads in Chris' mesh and lace shirt, shining as if the stars had woven themselves into the very fabric. He steps up and takes me in his arms, resting his head on top of mine while Richard embraces me from behind, kissing my shoulder. The sound of the ocean in the background soothes my frayed, aching heart and we three stand together for a long moment, listening to the ocean whisper its ancient song to the night._

  _“No child should ever go through that,” Christoph says at last, a tear dampening my hair. “My parents were awfully hard on me but they were never that awful. I don't know what to say, Lilly.”_

  _“Where are we?” Richard asks, looking around us. “I sort of recognize this place but when I try to pin the memory down, it fades.”_

  _I peer over Christoph's shoulder, trying to see if any landmarks appear to give me a clue but nothing happens. “I don't know, Reesh,” I reply. “I've never seen any place like this.”_

  _“Wait a second, I know where this is!” Christoph exclaims, scrubbing the few tears he's shed away with the back of his hand. “I've seen this place in my dreams! It's a combination of the one place all of us in the band feel the most home at. The ocean is Till's, the sky is Paul's, because we know how much he loves star gazing, and if we keep looking, we'll find a Hobbit house in the middle of an ancient forest, with a huge library inside and a paddock full of horses out back. That's Ollie and Flake. There's a dragon guarding the entrance to the forest. That's Reesh.”_

  _“What about you?” I ask._

  _“Well...inside the house is a huge blanket fort with fairy lights inside, lots of pillows of all kinds to lie down on and it's just dark enough so you feel safe,” Christoph explains. “I know, really stupid. But that's what we'll find if we go over that sand dune. I just know it.”_

  _“Why am I a dragon?” Richard asks, voice rich with amusement and affection. Christoph leans into him and kisses him on the lips, ever so slow and sweet. “Because you guard the heart of all that's safe and precious. You always have. Rammstein was your dream, your idea. And you'll fight until the end to keep us together, no matter what it costs you.”_

  _“Chris, that's...that's beautiful,” Richard says, returning the kiss and hugging him tight. “I never knew you had such a poet's heart.”_

  _“Well, not like Till does. I try, though.”_

  _“And you do very well,” I say, taking his hand. “Now, why are we here? The last thing I remember is passing out right as you were telling everyone that the three of us are in a relationship. You'd run off to the bathroom to throw up, Reesh was looking like he was considering throwing up too, and I passed out.”_

  _“I'd like to figure it all out but I think you're starting to wake up,” Richard says, turning to face a bright light that is coming from across the ocean. It resolves into the beginning of a gorgeous sunrise, the sky turning the faintest shade of pink around the edge of the velveteen darkness. “Maybe when you wake up, we can figure it out together.”_

  _“I hope so,” I say, lifting my face to the light and taking a deep, refreshing breath of the ocean breeze as it begins to freshen with the coming dawn. The sunlight blinds me to everything around, I blink to clear my eyes and..._

 I'm back.


	7. Chapter 7

Opening my eyes, I stared up into six human and two feline faces, all of them showing various stages of worry. Fiona was peering over the edge of the sofa at me, green eyes wide and tail fluffed out so much it looked more like a bottle brush than a tail, Marley was on my chest, patting my chin with her paws and when I tried to move, dug her claws in just enough to let me know that moving wasn’t a good idea at the moment.

“Lilly, what the hell? Are you okay?” Ari said, removing Marley from my chest and laying a hand on my forehead. “You turned snow white, your eyes rolled up in your head and you passed out.”

“How long have I been out?” I croaked, limbs too heavy to move and my eyes burning as if I’d gotten acid in them. I felt Till scoop me up and settle me on the couch with my head in Richard’s lap. Christoph knelt at Richard’s feet and ran his fingers over my face, saying softly, “You were out only a couple of minutes. Reesh and I tried to follow you down but you went through the web and somewhere we couldn’t follow.”

“I remember…a beach. We were standing on this beach somewhere and there were these huge sand dunes behind us. You said if we went over the dunes we’d find a forest guarded by a dragon?” I murmured, the memories coming back slowly. “You and Reesh were there in your stage gear and wherever his coat touched there was this…light trail that it left behind. And it looked like there were stars in the shirt you had on. And...you saw what my childhood was like.”

Fiona, who had calmed down somewhat, inched down the sofa cushions until she was sitting on my stomach. Marley joined her a moment later, staring down into my face with bright eyes that were like lasers. :: _We couldn_ _’_ _t follow you either. Weird place, dream place. Shared_ _dream place._ ** _::_** Marley said. :: _Has this happened before?::_

 “Not like this,” Richard replied, one hand on my forehead and the other holding Christoph’s. “I mean, ever since we all changed, we’ve kinda shared dreams; I know I have with Lilly and Chris. But I've never had a dream like Lilly's describing that I can remember.”

 “I have,” Christoph said, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully. “Usually twice a month, I end up dreaming about that beach or the forest. They’re not bad dreams but they’re so vivid that if I wake up in the middle of one, I’ll do anything to get back to sleep and into that dream again.”

 Ollie sat down on the floor, carefully carding through the carpet with his long fingers as he mused aloud, “A forest guarded by a dragon? I’ve seen that in a couple of my dreams.  And there’s a house in the woods too, isn’t there?”

 “It’s my safe place,” Flake said, his voice a near-whisper. “I know exactly what Christoph and Lilly are talking about. Back when we woke up from the viruses changing us, Lilly told us to think of someplace safe so she could ‘show’ our brains how to shield themselves and all the basics we’d need to stay sane and our fear not get in the way. I saw a painting of that house in a storybook when I was a kid; I’ve never found one like it save that picture. It used to show up in my dreams when I was under a lot of stress and when she told me to picture a safe place, that’s what came to mind. But it doesn’t look like a Hobbit house to me, it’s more of a two story cottage with a tree growing up through the middle of it.”

 “And to me it looks like a Hobbit house,” Christoph said, to which Ollie added, “Me too, but it’s not partially underground and it’s a lot taller. Paul, Till, Reesh, Ari, what about you?”

Paul sighed and snuggled into Ari's side, resting his head on her shoulder. “There was this beach in Hawai'i that we stayed at once. The sky was so full of stars, there wasn't a bit of space between them or so it seemed. After Ari was asleep one night, I laid out on the beach and watched them move across the sky. It was so peaceful. I woke up as the sun was coming up and good thing, else the morning tide might have carried me clear to the other side of the planet! That's what I've dreamed of.”

“No dragon, forest or ocean for me,” Ari mused. “When Paul showed me how to shield and all that, the safe place I envisioned was this field near my grandparent's home. I used to play there all the time when my family went to see them, there was a little stream that ran through it, a tiny pond that all the birds and little animals came to drink out of...it was so much fun for a little girl. I haven't been back there in years. It's probably a housing complex by now.”

Till, who had been pacing slowly back and forth, stopped and eased himself back into the chair he'd abandoned. “The pond behind my house, only it's not a pond, it's part of this sea that doesn't have an end. The stars live in the sky and in the water, there's mer-folk and everything  you've ever read about in fairy stories.” I looked up and met his eyes, saw what he was talking about reflected in their sea-green depths, and his smile was that of a little boy who hadn't been corrupted by the world yet.

Richard was absolutely silent the whole time, staring off into the distance with a very troubled, lost and sad expression on his face. When Christoph touched his knee to get his attention, he looked up and said, “I'm fine. Stop fussing.”

“No you're not,” I said, sitting up gradually so I wouldn't set off another dizzy spell or encourage my tummy to decide it was going to review everything I'd eaten that day. “Why are you so sad? Reesh, what's wrong?”

He laughed, a frisson of madness touching his voice. “I don't have a safe place in my dreams that's mine, all right? I'm always hiding away from what waits for me most nights. Maybe that's why there's a dragon out there, that I'm trying to guard the rest of you from the nastiness that comes creeping out of my head.”

“You have a safe place all of your own too,” I said, laying my hands on either sides of Richard's pale, troubled face. “I think you and I share that same safe place, that beach with the sky all aglow with stars and moonlight. Remember, you said that you recognized the place but every time you tried to focus on your surroundings, they faded? I'll bet you anything the next time you have a bad dream and tell yourself that you're on that beach with Chris and me that the nightmare will end.”

Richard blinked at me, then looked at the floor. “I hope so. I haven't had any bad, bad dreams lately but I'm always scared there will be and...I hate having them.”

“What you've gone through would put scars on anyone's soul,” Paul said softly, leaning over the couch and hugging Richard to him. “Listen to your woman, okay? Or am I going to have to kick you in the ass till you agree that she's right most of the time?”

_::Don't humans have shared dream-spaces?::_ Marley asked. She'd clambered up into Till's lap and he was petting her absently. _::Cats do. Don't know about dogs but we cats have shared dream-spaces::_

 “I don't think so,” Flake replied, reaching down to lift Fiona up from the floor and cuddle her into his chest. “Humans don't like to think about things they can't touch, feel or smell. “

  _::Stupid::_ Fiona replied, closing her eyes and purring softly. _::Just because I can't see a mouse in the walls doesn't mean it's not there::_  Her comment seemed to end the discussion, and we humans sat in silence for a long while, all of us lost in thought. Finally, Till looked at Christoph and said, “I assume you three were going to say something eventually, or were you going to just e-mail everyone and say 'hey, we're fucking'. It's always so nice to be the last to know, especially since we're supposed to be a family.”

 “Till!” Ari yelled, leaning across the sofa to smack him in the arm. “That's rude even for you!”

 “Hey, I'm just asking!” Till yelped, trying to shield himself with Marley, who hissed lazily at him and jumped out of his lap to go investigate the laundry room. “I mean, I hope you three have thought this out. Not like it's any of my business, but...well, it is.”

 “Yes, we've discussed all the bad and good of us being a triad,” Richard said, rolling his eyes at Till's comment. “Don't be such a drama queen, Till. I think we've all grown up enough to be responsible. And besides, that's my job.”

 Till opened his mouth to make a comment, saw Christoph, Paul, Ollie and Flake glaring at him, and shut it again. Ari stood up from her seat, stalked over to Till and towered over him, forest-green eyes glaring into ocean green. “Lilly is my friend. I trust her judgement. You, Ollie, Chris, Reesh and Flake, you're family but I swear to God if you try anything to break them up or say mean things to them, I'm going to tear you into small pieces with a pair of needle-nose pliers and a mallet. I love you but damn, Till, you can be an asshole.”

 Fiona yawned hugely and said, _::Ari is right. You're scared. Don't be. You’ve been friends and family forever, this changes nothing. Be happy for them, Till.::_

 Till sighed, a slow, shy smile breaking out on his face. “I guess I should say congratulations, and apologize for being an ass. I just never pictured you sharing Reesh with anyone, Lilly.”

 “Hey, I’ve got two gorgeous men in my life now, I’m not gonna quibble,” I laughed. “Besides, it’s only polite to share your toys.” Everyone in the room broke up laughing save for Chris and Reesh, who looked at each other, then at me with Richard saying, “Wait a second…share your _toys?_ ”

 Christoph leaned over and kissed Richard on the nose, saying, “Wanna play army? You can be the General and I’ll let you play with my privates.”

 Flake made a retching noise and covered his ears. “I’m not hearing this, nope, nope, la, la laaaa…” Ollie swatted him on the arm with a snort. “Oh shut your mouth, Flake. I think it’s adorable.”

 “Adorable yes, but that has to be the worst come-on I’ve ever heard! What are you, Chris, sixteen?”

 And with that, the tension of the evening faded away, leaving us to spend the next several hours chatting and having an impromptu party. Paul and Ari were the last to leave shortly after midnight, and when they were gone, Richard and Chris puttered around cleaning up the kitchen while I changed the sheets on our bed. It wasn’t soon after we collapsed into its cool, soft comfort, with Richard in the middle, Chris on his right and me on his left with the kittens at our feet. Arms around one another, kisses exchanged and blankets settled about, we fell asleep together and into the wonder of our shared dream-scape.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

I was still sleeping when Christoph left early the next morning. He’d said something the night before about promising his parents that he’d be over to visit the next day and needed to drop by his house to clean up before he went over to their house.  Richard and I had agreed with him when he’d asked if it was okay if we kept our relationship only within the band and a select few others. “I’d like to get to know your parents before I go telling them I’m sleeping with you and your best friend. And you’re sleeping with him too,” I’d said.

“Convoluted logic but it works,” he’d said with a big, bright smile. “They’ve mellowed out as they’ve aged but you’re right. I don’t know how they’d react knowing I was with Reesh and you. It’s not like they haven’t been around gay couples or whatever, being academics and all but…oh well. We’ll deal with the problems when and if they come.”

When I woke up, Marley was chasing Fiona around the house, their tiny meows growing stronger and louder by the day. I heard Richard laughing at them, cheering whoever was in the lead of their little race across the kitchen floor.  As I got dressed, I heard him say, “Yeah, you’d better go get Lilly-mom up, we have a lot to do today.”

“I’m up,” I called, pulling my socks on and making my way into the kitchen. The girls were parked in front of their food bowls, having their breakfast, so I went over to Richard where he was leaning against the sink and pulled him into my arms. “Good morning, pretty one,” I said softly, reaching up to muss his hair and gently tweak his nose.

“Yes it is,” he sighed, pressing a long, heated kiss to my lips. I rested my head against his chest and felt his heart beat under my ear and smiled. “How long have you been up?” I asked.

“Chris left around seven, so maybe six-thirty? I’d thought about coming back to bed but once he was gone, I was too restless so I went into my office and poked around in there. Got caught up on some stuff I’d been putting off, answered some e-mails including one from my daughter that wants to know when she can come meet the kittens, and got a letter to my mom finished. I’m not used to being up this early. What’s it like?” he said with a grin. “Us rock stars are usually going to bed this time of the morning, not getting up!”

“I got lucky when I started working, I got to choose what shifts I worked so I chose the late afternoon ones, plus every couple of months I was in the float pool to work in the trauma center on the overnight shift. I was never much of a morning person myself. Then when I was at Vis-Tek, I could set my own hours depending on the workload,” I replied, reluctantly letting go of Richard and heading to the fridge for my morning soda. Pouring it into a clean glass I fetched from the cupboard, I said, “Do you want me to make breakfast for us?”

“Nah, I thought we’d go out for a while,” Richard said. “That little coffee shop a block down from here? It’s only open till noon and oh my God, they make the best breakfast stuff you could ever want.”

_::Can we go?::_ asked Fiona.

 “No, kiddo, it’s too cold out and we don’t have a carrier for you and your sister,” I said. “You and Marley can stay here and keep watch over things. When we get a carrier and it’s a bit warm, we’ll go out together.”

  _::Bring us back a mouse or two?::_ Marley asked, coming over to rub against Richard’s sock-clad ankle. _::Or a fish! Yes, a big, floppy fish!::_

 “How about a box of kitten treats, little one?” Richard asked, lifting Marley up to his shoulder so she could peer out the kitchen window. “I honestly don’t want you or your sister breathing in my face if you’ve just eaten a mouse.”

  _::You're no fun::_ Marley said, purring to take the sting out of her comment. I smothered a laugh and went to get my heavier jacket and Richard's from the hallway closet. We made sure the kittens were set as far as food and water went, then we headed out into the bright sunlight.

 ::

 It took me a couple weeks to get used to the time change, as well as learning my way around Richard's neighborhood. By the time we were only a few days from Christmas, I was well-acquainted with the U-Bahn, moving around Berlin like a native. Richard had gone to visit his sister one afternoon and I had decided to check out the bookstore I passed every time I went to the U-Bahn station near the apartment. 

 The brass bell over the door chimed softly as I entered and a blast of warm, sweet-scented air brushed past my face. The bookstore was a quiet sanctuary from the crowds outside, well-lit with both wide windows and old-fashioned tailor's lamps. There were comfortable chairs and couches scattered about the store, and I could see three fat tabby cats lounging on one of them, while a sign made of weathered wood and brass letters proclaimed the name of the store to be “Ex Libris, est. 1992.” A huge fish tank that was set into one of the walls bubbled away quietly and I stopped to admire the brightly-colored fish that darted around through rocks, plants and decorations.

 “Good afternoon, may I help you?”

 I looked up to see a woman about my age, dressed in a heavy sweater and trousers in shades of green , her bright hazel eyes twinkling behind her glasses, leaning against a trolley full of books. Her iron-grey hair was tied back with a piece of black velveteen ribbon;  her demeanor reminded me so much of Paul's, I had to smile. “Hello,” I said. “I'm new in the area and I've passed this shop I don't know how many times and meant to come in.”

 The woman smiled in return, saying, “Wonderful! Feel free to look about and if you need anything, I'll be about or you can catch one of my assistants.” I nodded and wandered towards the back of the store, trying to look everywhere at once. Finally, I gave up trying and focused on the science fiction and fantasy section of the store. I found several books that I'd been itching to read but hadn't had the time to download or buy in paperback and immediately snagged them, putting them in a large, cream and yellow wicker basket that was obviously to be used as a shopping basket. When the basket was almost too full for me to carry, I found a chair near one of the windows and sat down, picking the top book from the pile and paging through it. I spent a good part of that day wandering through the bookstore, piling more and more books into bigger and bigger baskets, and only when I heard someone laugh did I come back to earth and realize how big of a load I'd accumulated.

 “I knew you were a big reader but...wow, Lilly! Did you leave any books for the rest of us to buy?”

 “Paul!” I said, shoving the book I'd been contemplating back on the shelf and hugging him hard. “What are you doing in this part of town? I thought you, Ari and your little one were going to be either spending the holidays with her family or with yours?”

 “I stopped by your apartment to drop off some cables Richard accidentally packed with my stuff,” Paul replied, returning the hug. “I left them in the building manager's office since no one was home. How in the world are you going to carry all of those books home?”

I grunted softly as I picked the large basket-full of books up and began making my way to the front counter. “Well, I had thought about leaving some here to pick up later but since you're here...”

“Your wish is my command, milady,” Paul said with a bright smile. “Besides, if there's anything in that basket that I like, I just may have to borrow it.”

::

The kittens were quite delighted to see Paul again. Fiona climbed up his jean-clad leg before he had a chance to pull off his coat and Marley was running in excitement to and fro from the laundry room back to the living room in a wide, sweeping circuit.

_::Paulchen is back! We missed you!::_ Fiona said, bumping Paul's chin with her head.

 “I'm glad to see you too, little one!” Paul replied. “You're growing like a weed, do you know that? And you're much heavier than when I was here last.”

 “I'm making tea, do you want any, Paul?” I said, dragging the four heavily-laden bags into the bedroom and out of the way. Marley leaped into one, purring loudly, then back out to join her sister who was sitting in Paul's lap.

 “Sure, whatever you're having will do,” he replied. “Where's Reesh, by the way?”

 “Visiting his sister, I think,” I said, putting the kettle on to boil. I rinsed out the teapot Richard had bought me a few days previous and left it full of hot water underneath a heavy towel. Deciding on a orange-spice blend of tea, I filled up the tea strainer and set it aside. “He said he'd be gone most of the day, especially if his mother was there. I take it they don't see each other often?”

 “Yeah, and it's the way he wants it. Reesh didn't speak to anyone in his family for quite a long time after we hit it big for multiple reasons. They've mellowed out since then but let's say he won't be introducing you to them any time soon. Don't take it personally, okay?”

 “I won't,” I replied. “He's told me about his family and I'd rather not face them for a long, long time. I get the collywobbles bad enough thinking about meeting Christoph's family.”

 “Constance, his sister, is a riot. You'll love her. Their parents are okay but kind of stuck up. I've never had any problems with them but Flake really dislikes them,” Paul said, coming into the kitchen with a kitten on each shoulder. “Till's mom and sister are lovely, Ollie's parents are too. Dunno if Flake will ever introduce you to his family and mine, well, they're all right.”

 The kettle began to whistle, so I dumped the hot water out of the teapot and filled it back up, setting the tea ball into the water and placing the lid back on carefully. Wrapping the tea towel around the pot again, I set the timer on the microwave for five minutes, then got two mugs out of the cabinet next to the sink. “One sugar or two?” I said, holding up the canister.

 “Two, if that's the orange-spice tea I got you, “ Paul said, pulling open the cutlery drawer and taking a couple of teaspoons out. “Ari loved that tea sampler you sent her for her birthday, by the way. She said for me to tell you thanks and that there's a gunpowder green tea you might like that she's had.”

 “I thought she would like the sampler. I had to get one for myself, I couldn't resist the way those teas smelled. Oh, I've some lemon cookies from the bakery down the street if you want some with your tea.”

 “You speak my language,” Paul snort-laughed, lifting the kittens down from his shoulders and shooing them back to the living room. He sat down at the kitchen table, looked up at me through his eyelashes and said, “Have you decided if you're going out on tour with us again?”

 I took my time pouring out our tea and putting some of the cookies I'd bought on a plate to give myself a chance to think. “I still haven't decided,” I sighed. “I want to, I had a lot of fun on the Stateside tour, but...I don't know. Especially since this is your  home territory and I don't want any of the fans causing you problems.”

 “Europe isn't like the States when it comes to fans,” Paul said, blowing the steam from his tea before taking a cautious sip. “I don't know if the right word is 'respectful' but most of the fans are a little less frantic about our personal lives.”

 I nodded, taking a sip of my own tea and smiling at the wonderful flavors and the scent of orange peel and spices. “I've reconsidered my job hunt, though. I think that I do need some time to just enjoy life, especially now that I've gotten a second chance at it.”

 “That's great! See, I told you that us men could be right _once_ in awhile!” Paul crowed. “So come out on the road with us. Even if you don't want to do anything other than travel and see the sights. And besides, don't you, Reesh and Christoph have a relationship to work on?”

 “Yeah, we do. I'll have to think about it some more before I commit to anything. Plus now that we have the kittens, just picking up and going is going to be a problem.”

  _::Can't we come along? We'll be good::_ Marley said. She had wandered into the kitchen and was staring up at me, her eyes big and pleading.

 “Well, there's places that don't allow cats and a tour bus isn't exactly cat-friendly,” I said. “Maybe I can find someone to look in on you and Fiona or board you.”

 “Why not bring the kits?” Paul said, crunching on a cookie. “They can't be any more difficult than bringing a kid along and we've done that.”

 “Paul, you didn't have to prove your kid had all their shots before crossing boarders!” I said with a laugh.

 “No, but we had to prove our singer did from time to time!”

 “Seriously, Paul, I don't want to start an international incident because I have two illegal kittens in my luggage,” I replied.

 “So have management look into where they can go, what they need as far as health certificates and the like, and we'll go from there. C'mon, Lilly, you know you want to!”

 “Oh for fuck's sake, Paul, you're worse than a kid!” I said, tossing the tea towel that had been keeping the tea warm at him. “All right, all right, I'll do it. Or have Reesh do it. But you, my friend, are responsible for keeping their litter box clean if we're on a tour bus for more than a day.”

 “Cross my heart,” Paul said, and did so. “Now that we've that out of the way, I do need to ask you a serious question. Do you know if we're going to keep developing talents or are we done? Because frankly, I'm kinda tired of not knowing from day to day what's happening inside my head.”

 I poured out the last of the tea into our cups and said, “I'm pretty sure whatever the viruses woke up in us or gave us is done developing or showing up. No one has said anything about new talents awakening for about a month or so, and I haven't developed anything new either. Flake's research has come to a dead end and so has Ari's, as far as I know.”

 “Yeah, she says she's pretty much tapped out everything she could think of that might tell her what talents might show up. If that's so, I'm glad. We've got, what, telepathy, empathy, a telekinetic, and...what else?”

 “Ari's affinity with water,” I said. Paul nodded and added, “Till has the same thing, which is obvious, what with him being a swimmer. And fire too, but we saw that on the last part of the tour. Oh, and being able to share our mental strength like Ollie and I did for Till when Christoph and Richard had that awful fight. Plus Flake's being able to 'read' an object's past by touching it. And let's not forget all of us being able to influence people with Till being the strongest of all of us. ”

 “That's enough for me,” I said, breaking the cookie I'd selected into smaller pieces. “I guess now we have to learn how to use them and not step over that line into abuse. It's too easy.”

 “Here, here,” Paul said, raising his mug and clinking it to mine. “I don't feel like becoming a super-villain anyway.”


	9. Chapter 9

Christmas Eve dawned grey and snowy.  The weather reports changed almost hourly; it seemed that no one had a clue as to what kind of weather was going to trudge across Germany on its way into Russia. I had finally gotten all of my things out of the storage building that I’d had sent to Berlin and had piled everything up in the spare bedroom. I’d carefully marked every box and had a printout of what was in each of them, so going through them wasn’t the nightmare it could have been. I’d sold all of my furniture save for an antique rocking chair that I’d found at the same estate sale I’d gotten my pearl necklace at, given away all of my dishes, kitchenware and appliances to a local charity, and most of my academic library to the library in my town, saving only a few books that would come in handy no matter what kind of job I’d get in the medical industry. The rest of my library was all science fiction and fantasy books, and they now resided in one of the big bookshelves in the living room.  The rest of my clothes and boxes of knick-knacks fit into my closet with room to spare. 

Richard had insisted on hanging my college degrees, certificates and awards along with his awards in his office and I’d blushed the whole time as he went to town hanging everything up. He’d stood back at last, one hand on his hip and a big grin on his face. He laid the hammer he'd been using down on his desk, put the last of the picture hooks into one of the drawers and turned to me.

“What do you think? I think it looks awesome,” he said, slinging his arms around my shoulders and pulling me close. I rested my head on his shoulder and sighed, “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Why not? Where were you wanting to put them?”

“In the spare bedroom. This is _your_ office, Reesh.”

“So? I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished. Even if I wasn’t with you then, I’m still proud of you,” he said, kissing my forehead. “And unless you want to turn the spare bedroom into an office for yourself, you’re more than welcome to share this one.”

I knew trying to argue with Richard when he had his heart set on something was futile, so I turned so I could rest my cheek on his chest, both arms around his waist. “Thank you baby,” I said, nuzzling into his warmth. “You’re far too good to me.”

“Get used to being spoilt, okay? Not only by me but by Christoph too,” Richard murmured, I had nothing to say to that, so I relaxed into our embrace, embarrassment fading at last.

I was going through one of the biggest storage boxed and could hear Richard puttering around the apartment as he talked to Ollie about his Christmas plans. “Yeah, the weather reports are all over the place. I’m gonna go with the two feet by tomorrow morning version of the weather. Don’t know why, it just feels like it. If it turns out to be two feet of snow, that does all of our plans in.”

Snorting at the somewhat-disgusted tone of my lover’s voice, I went back to sorting through a box of craft items I’d started but never got around to finishing. One small, plastic box was full of hand-made glass beads, while another held hand-carved bone beads of all sizes and shapes. A larger box held embroidery patterns, half-started pieces and kits I’d never opened. At the very bottom of the heavy shipping box was more needlework kits, supplies and books; I stacked the books to one side and considered where I was going to put everything to keep it safe from little curious paws. I remembered that there was a couple of empty drawers in my closet which would be perfect to store everything in, and I managed to get all of the boxes into their new home in one trip. As I turned off the closet light and shut the door, Marley came sauntering into the room and hopped up on the bed.

_::It’s snowing, Mama!::_ she said. _::Papa thinks it’s going to get very deep before it’s done::_

 “He’s probably right,” I replied, shelving the last book and breaking the shipping box down for storage. “I haven’t seen snow this deep in a long time and where I grew up, we had winters with deep snow and bitterly cold temperatures.”

  _::Sister and I wouldn’t have survived if you and Papa hadn’t come along::_ Marley said softly. _::We cried and cried but no one saw us or stopped. We were very scared::_

 I sat down next to Marley and began petting her, not knowing what to say. Finally, I said, “You and Fiona are safe now. No matter what happens to Papa Reesh and me, you and Fiona will always have a home.”

 Marley said nothing, choosing to stretch out at the foot of the bed and begin washing her face. I petted her for a while, then got up to see what Richard was up to. He was standing in the living room, Fiona sitting on the window sill, both of them staring out into the bleak, snow-blanketed landscape.  At the sound of my socked feet padding across the floor, Richard turned, a tired, grumpy on his face. “Looks like the city is pretty well shut down,” he said, sitting down on the window sill and squeaking with surprise when he leaned against the cold glass. “And it’s fucking cold out there too!”

 “I gather that all of the parties are cancelled too?” I asked, curling up on the couch and tucking my favorite blanket around my knees. “I know you were looking forward to Paul and Till’s parties and so was I.”

 “Till called earlier and said the main roads past his house are closed, and Ari called to say the same thing,” Richard sighed. “Well, I’m not going to complain too much. Truth be told, I’d rather you and I spend tonight and tomorrow by ourselves, seeing as it’s our first Christmas together.” He pulled the curtains shut after nudging Fiona from the window sill, and crossed the floor to snuggle up to me on the couch. I wrapped the blanket around both of us, Richard’s head on my shoulder and Fiona stretched across the back of the sofa.

 “I haven’t gotten you a thing for Christmas,” I said around a yawn. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like and I’ve been so busy getting my things out of storage.”

 “Don’t worry about presents,” Richard said, tangling our fingers together. “You’re the best present I ever got.”

 I laughed softly at him, lifting our hands up to kiss his knuckles. “You know, this is the first Christmas I’ve had in a long, long time where I’m not working my ass off. I was either working the holiday so the people I worked with who had families could get either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day off, or I was working so I wouldn’t have to sit home alone. It’s a weird feeling.”

 Marley had joined her sister on the back of the sofa while I was talking. _::It’s good no one is going anywhere::_ she said. **_:_** _:There is a lot of snow on the ground and I can smell more snow coming::_

 “Good thing I went to the store yesterday and stocked up on cat food,” I said. “I can only imagine the chaos here if I hadn’t.”

 “Did you want a tree?” Richard said. “I have an artificial one downstairs in storage and I can drag it up here so we can decorate it.”

 “Let’s do it tomorrow. I’d rather lie here and cuddle with you,” I said. “Who knows how many times we’ll have to be alone together?”

 “Many, many more if I can help it,” Richard sighed, wiggling about until he was comfortable. We eventually fell asleep in each other’s arms, waking only at midnight when the churches began ringing their bells to signal the arrival of Christmas Day. We stumbled into the kitchen where Richard produced a bottle of fine wine he’d hidden for such an occasion, and after pouring us each a glass full and giving each of the kittens a bowl of soy milk with a splash of vanilla in it, we drank a toast to the holiday and each other. I was considering a second glass when my mobile rang with the ring tone I’d assigned to Christoph. I pulled it out of the pocket of my baggy jeans and answered it, hearing his cheery voice coming down the line loud and clear even though I could hear the noise of a large party in the background.

 “Happy Christmas sweetheart!” I said. “Where in the world are you?”

 “At my sister’s. I was calling to wish you and Reesh a happy Christmas before things got too loud over here,” he laughed. “I’ll be here for a couple of days as it’s the holiday and I doubt the road into town will be passable till late tomorrow afternoon. If I had to guess, there’s about four feet of snow here at Constance’s house.”

 I set the phone down on the kitchen table and tapped the screen to bring up the phone options and turned the speaker on so everyone could hear. “Four feet? Shit, and the weather report was just calling for two, originally!” I said.

 “I’m glad I bought my Jeep when I did,” Christoph said, his voice lowering as he seemed to enter a quieter room. “It’s not my driving I worry about, it’s everyone else’s.”

 “How’s Constance?” Richard said, sitting down at the table so Marley could clamber up his pants leg and into his arms.

 “She’s great and says that if you and Lilly don’t visit soon she’s coming over to your house and smacking you in the head for not introducing her as soon as we got home,” Christoph laughed. “Her words, not mine.”

 I left Richard and Christoph to chatter while I stole off to the bathroom long enough to wash my face and brush my teeth. When I returned, Richard was talking softly, his back turned to me, and a feeling of nervousness and slight arousal humming in our bond. I shook my head and went into the living room to watch the snow, which was now coming down so thick and heavy I couldn’t see the small stand of trees less than a hundred feet from the apartment building. I was so hypnotized by the white blankness I didn’t hear Richard come up behind me. When he tapped my shoulder, I jumped a foot and spun about with a squeak of fright. “Geeze, Reesh, warn me next time! It’s a good thing I went to the bathroom else there’d be a puddle under your feet right now!”

“Oh shit, sorry, love!” Richard replied, a blush warming his cheeks. “Christoph had to run but he wanted me to tell you happy Christmas and love.”

 I put my arms around Richard, resting my head on his broad chest. “I didn’t mean to shout.”

 “It’s okay, I keep forgetting how quietly I can walk nowdays,” he replied, kissing my forehead. “I sneaked up on Marley the other morning and scared her half out of her fur. She was not amused.”

 “I can imagine,” I said with a short laugh. “Let’s go to bed before I trip over my own feet. That wine went right to my head.”

 Richard swept me up in his arms despite my yelling that he’d hurt his back and carried me off to bed, the kittens hot on his heels. Once we were all bedded snugly down, I wrapped my fingers into the back of Richard’s tee shirt and said, “A merry Christmas to you, my pretty peacock prince.” Down our group bond came a chorus of voices saying “Happy Christmas, loves” while Fiona and Marley simply purred as loudly as they could.

 The rest of the night was soft, deep and quiet.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit o' kink here!

It didn’t stop snowing overnight; in fact, the heavy snowfall offically became a blizzard early in the morning and by six a.m., the city officials were calling for everyone to stay at home unless you were medical personnel, a police officer or fireman. The weather reporters said that the storm crawling across Europe was one of the worst in well over a hundred years and they weren’t sure what the snowfall total would be. Despite Marley and Fiona wanting to sit in the windows and watch the snow, I pulled the heavy curtains over all of the windows to keep the heat in.

 “I don’t remember ever seeing snow like this when I was growing up,” Richard told me as we snuggled in bed after a quick breakfast. “I’ve been to Russia and it’s like this but here? Never.”

 “In the mountains near where I grew up they got a lot of snow but not in the lowlands,” I commented, eyes half-shut and drowsy. “Getting snowed in sounds like a good idea but I’d rather not, to be honest.”

 Richard made a sort-of grunted reply and curled closer to me, seeming to want to go back to sleep. Fiona and Marley had eaten their breakfast and were hogging one of the air vents in the kitchen that funneled warm air into the room, their rapidly-growing bodies almost too big for the grate. I was drifting off to sleep when I felt Richard’s hand ghost up my thigh and over my hip, fingers sneakily skimming under the elastic top of my panties. I smiled and purred, “So, that’s how you want to celebrate the holiday, yes?”

 “The kids are in the other room, why not? Kinda hard to be romantic when you have a face full of kitten,” Richard snort-laughed, sliding out of bed and going to the bedroom door to shut and lock it against a kitten invasion. He shed his t-shirt and sweatpants as he crossed the room, the dim light coming from a minute crack in the curtains leaving dappled shadows on winter-pale skin. Black spikes tumbled messily in front of his glistening blue eyes; he looked at me through them and sighed. Kneeling next to me on the bed, he leaned down and pressed the lightest of kisses to my lips, murmuring, “It’s been too long, my lady. We’re gonna be snowed in for at least a couple days, let’s make the most of it.”

 I’d been sliding out of my own clothes as Richard was walking across the room and now I pushed the blankets to the foot of the bed. The slightly cooler bedroom air made me shiver but I was quickly warmed by the full-body blush that hit me the second our lips touched. With a trembling hand, I reached up and laid my hand against Richard’s cheek, the silky skin contrasting with the sharp black stubble under my fingertips. Richard had always been pretty but now with the years magically peeled from his skin and bones, he was exquisite. I couldn’t help moaning softly when he pulled my fingers to his lips and kissed each one, nipping my pinky finger before letting go. There was still a slight shadow of his inner darkness deep in his eyes but it wasn’t holding him in its grasp as tightly as it once had.

 “I don’t think I’ve ever been as deeply in love with anyone as I am with you,” he said, curling around me and trapping me to him with arms and legs. “I thought I had but this…this feels so _different_. Maybe it’s because everything you feel, I do too. I don’t know and I honestly don’t care. All I know is I’m not alone any more, there’s not this ragged hole in my heart that won’t heal up.”

 While it had taken me quite some time to get used to being loved so fiercely and not afraid that the emotion would burn out in a flare of anger and pain, I understood what Richard was saying. While he was growing more and more in love with Christoph, it would never quite be what we had. Maybe it was gender related, maybe not. And knowing that I had nothing to be ashamed of, wanting our lovely drummer as well gave me a sense of security I never knew I wanted until now.

 However, there was a time and a place for everything and right now I had my happy, warm and aroused peacock prince wiggling up against my behind demanding attention. I wiggled about in his embrace and kissed him, deep and long, one hand sliding between us to cup his half-hard member. Richard gasped against my lips and growled, “Better not start something you can’t finish, pretty girl.”

 “Huh. Just for that I might just quit and let you finish yourself,” I teased, tightening my grip just enough to make Richard gasp and buck his hips up into my hand. He caught my wrist in an attempt to keep me from pulling away, his member growing even harder in my fingertips. “If you don’t play fair I’ll have to tie you down and eat you all up. Then when you’re too tired to resist, or make me stop, I’ll fuck you over and over until I can’t take it anymore, and I’ll come all inside you, oh, you bad, bad girl...”

 I pushed Richard away, mock-glaring at him. “Maybe I don’t feel like jacking you off. Maybe I just want to go back to sleep. After all, _you_ started this by putting your hand down my pants.”

 Richard moved so quickly I didn’t have time to do more than shove him a couple inches away. He shot across the bed and grabbed me by my hair, jerking my head back and sinking his teeth into my neck. If I hadn’t gotten a quick flash of what he planned to do I’d have kicked him across the room in self-defense. I cried out, trying to get my throat out of the trap his teeth had on me and fighting the grip he had on my hair and one arm. We’d played roughly with one another in the past but nothing this rough and harsh.

 “Let me _go_ , Reesh,” I snapped, scratching my nails down his back and feeling delicate skin give under them. He hissed and pulled his mouth free of my neck, sliding his lips up over my jaw and nibbling at my lips until I could feel them swell. Our eyes met for only a second before Richard shoved me flat onto the bed and purred, “I’m going to get the rope and if you move an inch, I’ll blister your ass. Got me?”

 “Safe word, first. Tulips,” I gasped, losing myself in the fierce lust that was drowning us alive.

 “Tulips it is. Now hush and lie still,” Richard’s muffled voice came from across the room. I peered through the mess of hair that covered my face and saw him coming back to the bed, several lengths of silken rope in his hands. We’d talked about bondage a few times, but we’d never gotten around to trying anything. I was somewhat afraid of what would happen but the wanting to be completely helpless, nothing more than a body to fuck, was shutting down my fear. I trusted my beloved with my life and heart and I knew the second I said our safe word, he'd stop.

 “Give me your hands,” Richard growled, snugging my wrists in a couple coils of the black silken rope. He lifted them upward, snagging a loop on a hook I hadn't noticed on the back of the headboard. I raised an eyebrow; Richard snort-laughed and said, “I used to have a lamp up there. Never knew it would come in handy for something else.” I grinned back, then let my smile drift away as he slid his lips down from my wrists, nipping and kissing the entire way. I arched my back, trying to get him to move on to my nipples but he shook his head, saying, “No, no, no, pretty girl, this is my show.”

 “I hate you,” I whined. “I hate you so much right now.”

 Richard laughed and using a knee, pushed my legs apart even though I play-fought him. “Sure, you hate me. You hate me so much you've made the bed soaking wet and you're shaking. Yeah, you hate me.” He wrapped another pair of ropes around my ankles and tied them to the foot board, stealing glances at me through his tangled hair.

  ** _::Are you okay sweetheart?::_** he asked. **_::Is this too much for you?::_**

 I smiled and said, _: **:I'm fine. But if you don't carry on, I might have to hurt you.::**_

  ** _::Carrying on, milady::_**

 Butterfly-light kisses on my ankles made me twitch and giggle from their teasing, tickling touch. Richard nuzzled, licked and kissed his way up my legs, nimbly avoiding the heat between my legs and licking a spiral path around my navel. “You need to get this pierced so I can hang shiny things in it,” he murmured. I snort-laughed at his comment, then said, “When are _you_ gonna get something pierced?”

 “Oh, you never know,” Richard replied, going up on his elbows to catch one of my hard nipples in his teeth. I cried out softly, jerking at the ropes that held me fast to the bed. Before I could catch my breath, Richard slid downward and between my legs. His tongue was only slightly cooler than the delicate skin between my legs; I gasped and arched up as best I could, trying to get his mouth on the most sensitive spots and failing. From the way Richard shuddered against me, I knew he was feeling everything I was and it was driving his own desire on hard and strong. I couldn’t make a sound at this point, my breath was stolen in the updraft of our need. I didn’t have to, I was screaming, crying out his name and begging for more down our shared mind-link.

  ** _::How bad do you want me?::_ ** Richard purred. **_::Tell me how much you want me to fuck you, drink you dry, worship every inch of you::_**

 I couldn’t put words together; all I could do was drop all of my barriers and leave my soul and heart wide open for him to see. Richard locked his lovely indigo-cobalt eyes on mine as he slid inside me, a single tear tracking down his face. Lost in our heat, our need, it didn’t take long for us to come to completion. Richard untangled himself after a long moment of him lying against my chest, breathing hard, and untied me, letting the ropes fall to the floor. He flopped down next to me, skin damp with sweat, and murmured, “Your turn.”

 “After a nap,” I sighed, pulling the blankets up over us and dropping off to sleep to the sound of snow hissing against the bedroom windows.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little more kink here...and we come to the conclusion of this part of the story! Thanks for reading.

It took almost a week for Berlin to dig itself out from the Christmas Eve-Christmas Day blizzard. Some parts of the city had over three feet of snow while around our apartment we had about two and a half feet. Richard and I enjoyed the enforced near-isolation, either playing with the kittens, watching television, wandering around on the Internet or in his case, working in his studio on some new music he’d come up with during the tour. I’d dug into the storage box of craft items I’d brought over and had begun crocheting a blanket for the bed in the guest bedroom. The soft, pastel shades of blue and green complimented the décor and the yarn was sleek and plush to the touch. I had to stop off and on to untangle a kitten (and Richard, once, when he’d stumbled over the box I had the yarn in and got it wrapped around his legs) so the blanket wasn’t coming along as fast as I’d originally thought it would, but it was fun to do.

And of course, when we weren’t busy with any of those activities, we were making out or flat-out making love. The tour had made it difficult for us to find time alone, and some nights we were too tired to do more than kiss goodnight and fall into bed. Sometimes our coupling had a tone of urgency about it, as if Richard was afraid he’d close his eyes and I’d be gone, which usually led to both of us ending up bruised and sore in the end. And some nights I’d wake from a nightmare of being back in that cold, dim cell, the memory of needles and pain pulling me out of sleep with tears and screams. Those nights led to us making love until morning and beyond, chasing the bad dreams and memories away if only for a short time.

Tonight, I had Richard blindfolded and tied to the bed, leaving his legs free. I could see the fine trembling under his skin that spoke of his nervousness in losing control and I spent a couple moments running my hands over his arms and chest, soothing him without speaking. He’d asked that I not tie his legs up and seeing the shadow of fear in his eyes, I’d simply kissed his nose and nodded. Safe word agreed upon, he’d sat quietly as I tied one of my silk scarves over his gorgeous eyes and pushed him slowly onto the bed. He’d not resisted an inch when I pulled his arms up over his head and wrapped his wrists with the silken rope he’d used on me, fastening it solidly to the hook behind the head board.

“Are you comfortable? Anything I need to loosen or tighten up?” I said softly.

“I’m okay. I’ll let you know if I’m not,” Richard replied in a slightly hoarse, husky voice. I leaned over and kissed him slowly and deeply, resting my hands lightly on his shoulders for balance. I felt him relax under my touch, so I stepped away and knelt on the bed near his ribcage, bending down to let my hair brush over his chest. Richard gasped quietly as I let my hair drift over his skin, lightly tickling his ribs which made him bite back a giggle. I followed the path my hair had traced with kisses, making my way up to his pebbling nipples, where I licked and sucked at them till he was arching up into my touch, panting and breathing out bitten-off sighs. Nibbling my way across his chest and up to one side of his neck, I licked and kissed the places on Richard’s neck that I knew were both ticklish and arousing.

“Oh God, Lilly, don’t tease me like this,” he whined, pulling gently at the rope that held him fast to the bed. “Do something, anything…”

With a wicked grin, I slid off the bed as if I was leaving, then crept up to the end of the bed. Richard’s legs were still splayed open, which meant I wasn’t going to have to move either of them to get to my prize. Without warning, I stole up the bed and leaning over his lovely member, I caught in my mouth and swallowed around its pulsing heat. Richard cried out in surprise and delight, thrusting his hips upward as I pulled back as not to get choked. Pressing my hands into his hips to keep him steady, I went to work giving my lover the best blow job he’d had in a long time, only pulling away at the last second. Swinging a leg over his lean hips, I knelt down, taking him all the way inside me in one move, both of us unable to cry out from the shared emotions that caught us up.

“Lilly! Holy…oh…please don’t stop!”

I reached up and slid the blindfold from Richard’s eyes, saying, “I want to see your eyes when you come in me. Do you like me riding you like this?”

Richard’s reply was all mental, he’d lost his ability to speak. He writhed in his bonds, desperately wanting his hands loose so he could grab my hips and force me to ride him harder, faster. His breath was coming in stuttering little gasps, telling me he was close to his end. I closed my eyes and let my orgasm take me under, dragging Richard along with me. We were both still twitching from the aftershocks as I reached up and freed his arms, rubbing the red marks out of them and placing tender little kisses around his wrists. Finally spent, I tumbled onto the bed, wrapping my arms around Richard’s sweaty, shaking body and relishing the wonderful afterglow. Silence reigned for several moments, then I said, “Are you okay? Anything hurt?”

Richard kissed me, laying his head on my chest. “I’m just fine. Don’t think I’ll be up for another go for the rest of the day.”

“Me either. Want to get dressed and go clean off the pocket garden so we can take the kittens out for a bit?” I said, loathe to move but remembering my promise to Marley and Fiona that as soon as the snow stopped, we’d clean off the pocket garden and take them outside to play for a while. They’d been all but bouncing off the walls since then, and we’d only managed to get some time alone because they were sleeping.

“Yeah, we need to get out in the fresh air, blow the cobwebs out,” Richard sighed, taking one of my hands in his and kissing it. “Bundle up, it’s got to be nearly zero out there.”

It took us about a half an hour to make a path through the snow in the pocket garden outside the kitchen door, the kittens watching us intently from inside the apartment. We were both rosy-cheeked and energized by the time we were done, eager to see what Marley and Fiona thought. They came outside, mincing delicately through the snow, chirping and making tiny meowing sounds as they explored the piles of snow and the pathways that lead around the walls of the garden. Once that was finished, they began mock-fighting, rolling around in the snow and being as fierce as kittens can be. Richard and I were out of breath not long after due to laughing so hard at their silly antics; we were still giggling like nutters when the girls announced they were cold and wanted their warm bed or a warm lap, which was preferable. The four of us trooped back into the apartment, shedding our outer clothes in the laundry room and then wrapping up in cozy blankets on the couch. Fiona burrowed down under the blankets, purring all the time, while Marley snuggled down on my chest under the blankets. Content and happy, we cuddled the afternoon away.

::::

January passed into February almost too quickly, and the band was due back in rehearsal for the second leg of the tour. With a nearly all brand new stage to get used to, they spent all but Saturday and Sunday in rehearsals, going from nearly eleven in the morning to late at night. At the end of the second week, Paul declared they were going to have their New Year’s party that Saturday night come hell or high water. I was eager to see Arielle as well as the rest of the band; by the time we got to Paul’s huge, lovely home on the outskirts of Berlin, I was fairly bouncing up and down in my seat which made Richard laugh. Paul and I collided on his doorstep where he’d been waiting for us to arrive; he grabbed me around the waist and swung me around, crowing, “Reesh, where have you been keeping this pretty woman? Locked her up in the basement, I’ll bet! You dog, you!”

I heard Till’s laugh from nearby; he unwound Paul’s arms and hugged me. “Ease up there, Landers, you’ll squish her! How have you been, Lilly?”

I hugged Till in return, saying, “I’m well. It’s good to see you and everyone. Sorry the weather didn’t cooperate and your Christmas party got cancelled.”

“Ah, it’s okay,” Till said as we followed Paul and Arielle into their house. It was a lovely place, full of flowers, awards covering the walls and warm-toned hardwood floors that were set off by cream and bisque walls and ceiling. As we went into the kitchen, Ari pointed at a door and said, “Whatever you do, _don’t_ open that door. That’s Paul’s domain and heaven only knows what’ll fall out if you open the door.”

I laughed and accepted a glass of wine from Ollie, who was leaning against the sink, sneaking baby carrots and slices of cucumber from the crudité plate on the kitchen table. He gave me a one-armed hug, saying, “You look really good. All settled in at last? And how are the kittens?”

I thanked Ollie for the wine and the compliment and replied, “Yep, all settled in and the kittens are growing like weeds. We cleaned most of the snow out of the pocket garden the other day so we could take them outside and they had a wonderful time.”

Ollie grinned and handed me several baby carrots to munch on. “I’ll bet they were adorable. Did you get pictures?”

“Yes! Not many, though, I was laughing too hard to take pictures properly,” I said, digging my phone out of my jacket pocket and showing him the few pictures I’d taken. There was one I liked the best; Marley was sitting on top of a hummock of snow while Fiona was crouched below, looking as if she was in the process of pouncing on something. Ollie liked it as well, so I attached the picture to a message and sent it to him.  We were in the middle of talking about the kittens when Flake and Christoph arrived in a sudden gust of wind and powdery snow, both of them stopping long enough in the foyer to stamp snow off of their boots and shake it from their hair. Dodging around people, I hurried to hug both of them, Christoph's hug a tad longer and a bit closer. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I was going to come over once the snow stopped but I got tangled up in messing about my house. You and Reesh look lovely.”

Blushing, I squeezed his arm quickly and murmured, “Thank you, and you look edible. What did you say to Richard on Christmas Eve that made him all hot and bothered?”

“That’s between us, nibby nose,” Schneider teased, shucking his jacket and hanging it over mine on the coat rack in the foyer. “Now feed me. I haven’t eaten today and my stomach’s been growling so loud it’s audible over the mp3 player in the car.”

“Get in here Schneider before Till and Richard eat all the cake!” Paul yelled from the kitchen, making everyone laugh. We squeezed into the kitchen, talking, eating and laughing; once we were full and the dishes dealt with, Paul led us into their huge living room where we all settled into comfortable chairs to talk well into the night.

It was close to two in the morning when Ollie declared himself done and dusted, so the party began to break up slowly. As we were shrugging into our coats, Flake stopped, looked everyone in the eye and said, “I hope this tour is a bit quieter than the one we just finished. I don’t think I can handle looking over my shoulder every ten minutes to see if something’s there or breaking up a fight between you and Chris, Richard.”

“God, I hope not!” Paul said as he leaned against one of the foyer walls, one arm around Ari’s waist. “Maybe whoever was giving us grief stayed in the US. As far as I’m concerned, they’d better have stayed there because if I ever find out who it was, there won’t be a hole deep enough for them to hide in. Or anything left of them to scrape up with a teaspoon.”

We all agreed Paul was right, and after a round of goodbye hugs and last minute instructions about practice, trooped back into the night. Christoph hung around after Till, Ollie and Flake had left, scrubbing the toe of his boot back and forth in the snow. He looked up at Richard and me, a shy smile on his face. Richard reached his hand out and ran his gloved fingers along Christoph's jaw and said, “Come back to the house with us. No reason you should make that trip back to a cold and lonely house.”

I held out my hand and took Christoph's arm, gently pulling him towards Richard’s car. “And it looks like your ride took off without you anyway.”

“I told Flake I was going to get a ride back to my place with you guys,” he said, clambering in the back of the car. “Are you sure you want me to stay over?”

Richard turned in his seat, catching Christoph's hand and nipping his fingertips. “Of course we do. The kittens have been asking about you and I’d hate to go home and tell them I saw you but you didn’t come to see them.”

“Oh. Well, we’d better get going. Wouldn’t want to annoy the kittens,” Christoph snort-laughed, letting go of Richard’s hand as he leaned over the seat to kiss me. Nothing happened between the three of us that night as we were all tired and very sleepy, so we trooped off to bed, kittens following behind, and were soon curled around each other, relishing the happiness and security in our bond. The future was uncertain, that was for sure, but as long as we had each other, we’d be able to weather whatever storm came our way.


End file.
